And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle
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These things-the beauty, the memory of our own past-are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
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My children are 19, 16, and 12. One is in college, the second considering colleges, and the third looking towards them in the future (he loves the dining hall the best when we visit campuses!). So I think about the future, what they will grow up to be, and what God has for them in the future. I wonder what will they become.
I want to inspire them to pursue their dreams, to be all that they are designed to be, and to enjoy the life that God has given them. That’s why this young man’s story inspires me.
Thomas Lake has already risen to the top of his field as a writer, having written for the St. Petersburg Times and Atlanta Magazine and currently for Sports Illustrated as a senior writer. In this video (from a chapel talk at his alma mater, Gordon College) Thomas Lake speaks of his life and where God has brought him at 31 years of age. He speaks of stories and the one story that’s all around us. He speaks eloquently and inspires. I encourage you to watch the whole talk and be inspired yourself.
Posted in Books and articles, contemporary culture, Personal growth | Tagged arts-biblical perspective, parenting, Parenting for Joy, Power of Story | Leave a Comment »
I don’t know if you have been following the story of Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks NBA basketball team (it’s been kinda hard to miss it!), but I have been fascinated by it, for a number of different reasons.
First, I love basketball, and although I don’t like the NBA all that much (except for the Bulls during the Michael Jordan years), sometimes I do watch it. I am more partial to college basketball, to the upsets and underdogs, to the great team that defeats a bunch of great players who are not a team (remember North Carolina State vs. Houston’s Phi Slamma Jamma?). So I am particularly intrigued by the underdog who is succeeding against all odds (as in this play, where he outplays the player who was drafted number one in the year he entered the NBA, or this play when he hit the game winning shot last night).
Second, Jeremy Lin is a Christian who exhibits his faith in all he says and does. There have been a number of people who have claimed to know Christ in my lifetime, a significant percentage of whom have really not been an accurate or credible witness for him. Jeremy Lin is not like that. He quietly states what he believes and lives it out through his actions. Listen to his humility after he hit that game winning shot.
Third, he loves to play basketball! If you watch him, you can see it all over his face. He is enjoying his God-given ability to play this sport to the best of his ability and find great joy in it. Although Eric Liddell actually never said the words that he says in the movie Chariots of Fire, “when I play (run) I feel his pleasure” could be put in the mouth of Jeremy Lin, and would accurately describe God’s intention for each of us when we have truly found the vocation or recreation that fits with our God-given design.
Fourth, I think Owen Strachan, in his article on Jeremy Lin, hit the nail on the head.
I see in Lin an underdog who, though unlike me in many ways, is living my dreams. He is an athlete who was tagged, in many places and from many voices, as One Who Would Not Lead the Way. He is not supposed to be here. He should be doing what weekend warriors like me do, playing overheated pickup basketball in cheaply furnished athletic clubs that feature courts best suited to peewee leagues. He wasn’t recruited. He wasn’t drafted. He wasn’t wanted…
You don’t need to like sports to enjoy this story. You don’t need to dream about which zone defense to employ against a sharpshooter to identify with Lin. All you need to be is a normal person in this world. All you need to be is written off at some point in your life. If you’ve encountered prejudice, hardship, and injustice in some form, you can find some joy in this unlikely tale of unappreciated talent overcoming unjustly stacked odds. If you have had family members speak ill of your abilities, coworkers demean you as an employee, or people write you off as a thinker because you’re a Christian, well, Linsanity is for you, and you, and you.
God is for the insignificant one. God sees our struggles with being overlooked, unappreciated, left out. He cares. He cares when it’s not us, but our children who are gifted and worthy are not seen that way by others. He is the God of the small and the God of the future reversal, when those who trust him will be vindicated and will rejoice with him forever!
Enjoy this “Lin-sanity”, when a nobody defies the odds and the expectations in order to give us a small picture of the hope that we have that God will one day make all things new.
Posted in contemporary culture | Tagged Jeremy Lin, joy, Parenting for Joy | 3 Comments »
We are all very familiar with the Francesco Schettino after last week’s horrible accident in the Mediterranean Sea. One merely mentions his name and thoughts are recalled in much the same way as when one would mention the name Benedict Arnold. His handling of the crash and it’s aftermath, and the subsequent reflection on his manhood are addressed very well by Al Mohler’s article, The Chicken of the Sea: A Modern Tale of Fear, Failure, and Cowardice.
I would like to compare him to another man who has experienced failure in the past week, Kyle Williams. Now before I bring up the comparison I want to make it clear that I am not comparing the circumstances – nothing could compare with the horrible accident that to this point has cost 16 people their lives, along with the millions of dollars and jobs lost. No situation could compare with that. What I would like to compare at least in some way is how we handle failure.
Kyle Williams committed two very public, costly errors that contributed to the San Francisco 49ers losing their NFC Championship game this past week. As an athlete in a business like football, he knows more than anyone else that he blew it. No one needs to threaten his life, as at least one person has in the wake of this game. He feels awful for his teammates, especially when he fumbled a punt return in overtime that led to the winning overtime field goal for the Giants just a few plays later.
How does he handle it? How do we handle it when we blow it? A football game is not that important in the whole scheme of things, I know. But when you let others down in a big way, how do you bounce back?
Kyle Williams was asked today, in a radio interview with Dan Patrick, what his father, a sports General Manager for the Chicago White Sox, said to him after the game. Williams said that his father was the first person he saw when he left the locker room. His father said this to him, “Are you tough enough? Are you man enough to handle this?” Kyle Williams’ father Kenny knew that the answer was yes. Kenny Williams was confident enough in his son Kyle to know that Kyle would bounce back from this. I assume that’s because his father knew his son well enough, and he had taught Kyle enough from his own experience, to be confident that his son had a good foundation. Kyle’s father was there for him in his failure.
Captain Schettino did not handle his failure well. He ran away from it, he wouldn’t deal with it. Kyle Williams, on the other hand, acknowledged his mistakes and is ready to learn from them. How about you? How about your children, fathers and mothers? Are you preparing your children to avoid situations of failure compounded, like Captain Schettino? Have you taught your children how to deal with failure, to bounce back from it and learn from it, like Kyle Williams? Have you laid for them and with them a rock solid foundation? You can find that foundation in Jesus Christ. He is the only sure, rock solid foundation.
Posted in Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, contemporary culture | Leave a Comment »
Scripture is like the world: “undecipherable in its fullness and in the multiplicity of its meanings.” [It is] a deep forest, with innumerable branches, “an infinite forest of meanings”: the more involved one gets in it, the more one discovers that it is impossible to explore it right to its end. It is a table arranged by Wisdom, laden with food, where the unfathomable divinity of the Savior is itself offered as nourishment to all. Treasure of the Holy Spirit, whose riches are as infinite as himself. True labyrinth. Deep heavens, unfathomable abyss. Vast sea, where there is endless voyaging “with all sails set.” Ocean of mystery.
Henri de Lubac in Medieval Exegesis, quoted by Peter J. Leithart.
Posted in Biblical Studies, Biblical theology | Leave a Comment »
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