Consider this

Spring is here (sort of) and that means one thing: The NHL playoffs are just around the corner! The NHL is divided into two conferences: “Eastern” and “Western”. The winner of the Eastern Conference is awarded the “Prince of Wales trophy” and the winner of the Western Conference is given the “Clarence S. Campbell Bowl”. Now, there is an interesting tradition surrounding these two trophies. It states that the winning team is not supposed to touch them. Most of the time, when a team wins anything, the trophy is passed around from player to player. That is not the case with the Prince of Wales or the Campbell trophies. Though the tradition has been broken at times (most recently by Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009), normally the team captain poses for one relatively unhappy looking photo with the trophy and then the ceremony is over. Why? Players do not touch or hoist the conference trophies because those trophies are not their goal. Their goal is to win th...

Do you know the name, “Bob Keeshan”? Likely not – but you probably do know him. He was the actor that played “Captain Kangaroo”. Captain Kangaroo was one of the most successful children’s shows of all time. Interestingly, Bob Keeshan was 28 years old when he got the part of the much older Captain. This meant that before taping the show he had to spend hours in the make up chair. They put a gray wig on his head. They glued on a big gray moustache. They added wrinkles and a pair of glasses to make him look wiser. It was a long process every day. However, as time went on, Bob found that he had to spend less time in the chair. Eventually, he did not need the gray wig because his own hair had turned gray. No longer did he need the fake moustache – he could grow his own. Real wrinkles eventually showed up so that he did not need the fake ones. As Bob said, “I eventually grew into the part”. I like that as a picture for Christian people. As we start the Christian w...

“Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:17-19). Our lives are lived between the extremes of being either overly self-denying (on one side) or overly ambitious (on the other). If you lean too far towards the self-denying side then there is the possibility that you may get to the end of your life and say, "Huh... I wish I would have done...” (whatever). The greater danger, though, as I see it, is that ambition can grow into greed and dissatisfaction with everything. Nothing is good enough and there is no contentment or real joy because there is always somet...

Approaching Amarillo, Texas and looking to the west, all I could see were huge, dark clouds. As the clouds moved closer, the wind, which until this point had been just a nice breeze, started to blow so hard that it was hard to keep the van on the interstate. Then the rain started. Just a trickle at first, a few drop here and there, and then it became a complete downpour. The rain was coming so fast and so hard that you could no longer drive the speed limit because, first, you could not see and, second, the vehicle was hydroplaning all over the place. Then the hail began. Again, not hard at first, but by the time we reached the outer limits of Amarillo some of them were approaching marble and then golf ball size. It was beginning to get a little scary. We got off the road and hid under the canopy of gas station and then that I saw something that I had never seen before or since. All kinds of cars, trucks and semis began parking under an overpass – right on the interstate! I ...