As a baseball fan, I would love to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Here are few items you would find: Transfer agreement sending Babe Ruth from Red Sox to Yankees for $25,000 “and other good and valuable considerations.” Nolan Ryan’s caps from each of his seven no-hitters (4 Angels, 2 Rangers, 1 Astros). You’ll even find Shoeless Joe Jackson's shoes. Perhaps baseball isn't your thing and you would be bored-to-death visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame. What Halls of Fame would you visit? Maybe you’d like to visit one of these: Croquet Hall of Fame International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame Hebrews 11 has often been referred to as the Bible’s “Hall of Fame for Faith.” It’s filled with snapshots of people who lived by faith. We live in a world where many people dismiss faith as simply “wishful…
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As many of you did, I watched the breaking news coverage of the Supreme Court's ruling on legalizing gay marriage. If you missed it live, I'm sure you were soon bombarded with social media outbursts from both sides of the debate. At least for one news cycle, it bumped the Confederate Flag from the most-trending item on both Facebook and Twitter. To be honest, the Court's ruling didn't surprise me. Nor did it dishearten or discourage me. Anyone who thinks gay marriage and the surrounding issues is just a passing fad has missed the larger cultural shift that began in the 1960s. Gay marriage is a symptom of this shift, and it's important for people of faith to not miss the larger issues involved. Our cultural has shifted -- dramatically -- to moral relativism. Up until modern times, most people generally subscribed to the idea that a certain baseline of…
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I’m sure you’ve heard of placebos and the placebo effect. Clinical trials have shown that some people who believe they are getting a real medication will get better – even if it’s only a sugar pill. Scientists have even shown that if someone is given decaffeinated coffee, but believes it is caffeinated, scans will show that their brain has been activated in the same way as if it had been real coffee. Hope can be easily manipulated. Here’s the downside to placebos: False hope will eventually disappoint us. Then what do you do when your hopes are dashed and life feels empty and meaningless? At Mountainview, our journey through Romans 8 came to an end this past weekend and it did so in grand fashion. On the one hand, Romans 8 is filled with weighty theology. The mistake we often make is to think that theology is theoretical, not practical. Not…
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The late Christian author Doris Betts was known for her short stories and essays. In one of those stories she tells about driving down the highway in North Carolina and seeing a highway patrolman beside the road. That's not an unusal sight. What he was doing was quite unusual (maybe not for North Carolina!). As Betts got closer to the police officer, she noticed that a truck hauling chickens had veered off the road, the crash causing the back of the truck to come apart. The chickens were running free -- or for their life, whichever way you want to look at it. The driver of the truck was frantically trying to gather the chickens. Some people who had observed the crash were actually trying to steal the chickens. Chicken parts were everywhere. The scene was a mix of horror and humor, and the lone patrolman was trying to bring…
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For some folks, it is hard to prioritize their goals because they feel like all their goals are equally important. Failing to prioritize their goals is one reason why many people fail to achieve their goals – the lack of priorities actually paralyzes you. A seminar leader wanted to make illustrate the power of priorities, so he took a wide-mouth jar and filled it with rocks. “Is the jar full?” he asked. “Yes,” came a reply. “Oh, really?” he said. Then he poured smaller pebbles into the jar to fill the spaces between the rocks. “Is it full now?” “Yes,” said someone else. “Oh, really?” He then filled the remaining spaces between the rocks and stones with sand. “Is it full now?” he asked. “Probably not,” said another, to the amusement of the audience. Then he took a pitcher of water and poured it into the jar. To get everything…
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