Month: February 2022

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Is the Clock Being Run Out on You?

In the world of sports, if you’re winning near the end of the game, one of your biggest goals is to keep the clock running. You work within the rules of the game to avoid doing things that will stop the time from ticking away.

The goal is to make it harder and harder for the opponent to do anything significant in the diminishing amount of time that’s left. In football you want to tackle runners before they get out of bounds. In basketball you want to chew up as much of the play clock as you can before taking a shot. In hockey you want to control the puck and make the other team come to you. It’s all meant to use up as much of the clock as you can in order to give the opponent less time to mount a comeback, ultimately increasing your chances of victory.

So now let’s put a spiritual application to this.

Consider Satan’s situation for a moment. First John 5:19 says “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.” Since each member of the human race is born a sinner, we are all initially part of Satan’s domain and are destined to spend eternity separated from God. The only way he can lose those souls is if they accept Christ and cross over to His domain. In that sense, Satan doesn’t need to play to win, he just needs to play to not lose.

Time is the one thing that everyone has the same amount of. Whether talking about the unsaved or believers that aren’t striving to go deeper with God, I’ve got to imagine that one of Satan’s biggest strategies is to run out the clock. Let’s look at unbelievers first. From Satan’s perspective, as long as they’re preoccupied with something that has no eternal impact, they’re in a good place. “Learning about 18th Century French literature (or physics, or social activism, or anything else that consumes your passion and drive)? That’s great…you get after it with everything you’ve got!” As long as that person’s busy with something that takes a lot of their brain power, there’s not a whole lot left over to take a look up at the stars in the night sky and wonder about their creator.

It’s the same thing for those that have accepted Christ but are preoccupied with the here and now. If you have a talent that Christ has called you to use, but instead you’re spending your time streaming the latest season of whatever show you happen to be enjoying, in all actuality, that’s keeping you on the bench. I’m learning that life moves pretty quickly, and it seems like it moves a little faster with each passing year. I have no idea how much sand I still have left in the hourglass, and you don’t know how much you’ve got left in yours, either. The things we thought we’d have plenty of time to do don’t actually get done unless we live with intentionality. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy shutting off my mind through a variety of ways, but there’s a difference between a little bit of relaxing and a seriously large amount of cumulative hours.

So I have to ask…what’s your biggest time-suck? Facebook/Instagram? Netflix? Some sort of mindless games? YouTube? Wordle, anyone?

Some of the cheerier armchair philosophers will say that this life is really nothing more than sitting around and waiting to die. For those that aren’t following God’s lead and using their spiritual gifts…maybe those philosophers are right.

I urge you…live your life with eternity in mind. We only get one go-round to make a lasting difference, and we’re supposed to be taking this opportunity to glorify God and be part of building His kingdom. Don’t let the adversary run out the clock on you when there’s still so much left to do.

Lord, there are so many distractions out there today. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by sensory overload. Help me know the difference between healthy forms of unwinding and plain old wasting time. When giving to You, finances are usually the first thing to come to mind, but show me where and how You want me to honor You with my time, as well. Amen

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Road Trips are Less Fun When You’re the Only One Awake

While we’ve still got some Winter Olympics going on, here’s another tale from when my friend Jeremy and I went to check out the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

On the way out west we had plenty of time to get there, so we drove during the day and stopped at night to sleep at rest stops. On the way back east we were in a hurry to get the rental car turned back in and get back to school. To save time, our plan was to drive through the night.

On our last day in Utah we watched a cross-country skiing event and then left to start the trip east directly from there. Jeremy took the first shift driving, and drove most of the day. Still keyed up from our experiences so far, it dawned on me a little too late that I should be trying to catch some sleep while he was driving. I do okay when I have to get up early, but I don’t do real well when I have to stay up late. I think I tried catching a nap, but when there’s pressure to fall asleep, it makes it harder to do, so I don’t think I got any sleep to speak of.

When the time came for Jeremy to tag out, I got behind the wheel and started driving. I don’t remember if it was dark when I started, but if it wasn’t, it wasn’t long before night fell. Jeremy racked out in the back seat for awhile. Between the darkness, drone of the road noise, lack of conversation, and the cumulative excitement of the day (and past week plus), I was ready for some sleep and it got hard to stay awake and alert.

I’m not saying anyone should do this, but we had learned through experimentation that the max speed you could set the cruise control to was 82.5 mph. That speed sounds really fast, but it wasn’t egregious when the speed limit was 75. We regularly set it that fast, but slowed down when we saw cops off in the distance. It was great because out there, where there were big stretches of wide open road, cops with radar guns had nowhere to hide; you could often see for miles.

You can’t see them at night, though.

You know that point in sleepiness where your eyes are half-lidded and moving your eyeballs around seems like it takes too much effort? That’s where I was, when, at 82.5 mph, I blew past two cop cars parked on the median somewhere in Nebraska.

Well, the red and blue lights came on and started coming my way. That makes for an uncomfortable way to rouse someone from their slumber. “Hey dude, wake up. Um…we’re getting pulled over.”

If I had been half asleep 30 seconds ago, I was wide awake now.

I pulled over on the shoulder and waited while the officer ran our plates. Eventually he came alongside the passenger’s window, taking a peek inside with his flashlight. He probably didn’t know what to think as he saw a dude in a sleeping bag in the back seat, boxes of supplies and cold-weather gear scattered throughout the front and back seats, and skis and ski poles stuffed along the side of the car. We handed both of our licenses over and sat there waiting as he ran our names through his computer.

I don’t totally remember the sequence of events, but I ended up going to sit in the front passenger’s seat of his cruiser with him (no, not while wearing handcuffs). I told him a little about us, that we had driven across the country to go watch some of the Olympics, and now we were on our way back. It’s important to understand that the animosity toward cops that’s so prevalent today wasn’t the case back then. This was a mere five months after the events of 9/11, when police officers and other first responders were hailed as heroes. There was a much greater attitude of “we’re all in this together” among Americans. He asked me about some of the events (and big-name athletes) we’d seen and what else we had done while we were out there. I think we probably broke up a boring night shift for him.

He had clocked me driving at a speed that gave him leeway to decide whether to give me a ticket or to let me off with a warning. I think he kind of liked the idea of the adventure we were on, so he let me off with a warning, but he did recognize that I was a legitimate danger to myself and others on the road because of how tired I was. He stressed the importance of being alert and urged me to get somewhere safe and get some sleep…soon…then let us go. We stopped at the next exit, gassed up, and switched drivers. We made it back to school the following evening.

Nobody likes to see those flashing lights come on in their rear-view mirror. I’m not sure how long it took me to realize it, but getting stopped on this occasion quite possibly saved not only my life, but the life of the passenger in the back seat, and maybe others on the road that night. If I hadn’t been stopped, I probably would’ve fallen asleep at the wheel. I guess you could say that God threw a little hiccup in my plans, which ended up saving me from myself.

There are things that will happen in this life that you’ll gripe and grumble about as they’re happening, only for you to realize later that those were things to be grateful for. Live through enough of those events, and it helps you realize that you’re probably better off not grumbling about things that seem bad in the short term, because you don’t yet know how they tie into the bigger picture. God often makes you take the scenic route while you have the express lane in mind, and vice versa. We don’t see until after the fact that it was something we wouldn’t have chosen, but had unforeseen benefits.

The next time you get hit with something that seems like something to groan about, try holding off on the complaints for awhile. It might just be God’s way of saving you from yourself.

To all those officers out there, thank you for being willing to step into tense and uncertain situations on the public’s behalf every time you go to work. Additional thanks to those of you that have cut a little slack to people that just needed to be scared a little bit by the flashing lights of a police car.

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Winter Olympics, From Salt Lake City to Beijing

Though I’m not really paying much attention to the 2022 Winter Olympics, it does bring up some fun memories. For those of you that are long-time readers of the blog, you may remember that when I was in college my roommate Jeremy and I drove from Western New York State out to Utah to attend some of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. It’s crazy to think that our Utah trip was 20 years ago. Today’s entry doesn’t really have a “moral” to it…just some memories.

I don’t want to rehash a whole lot right here (you can read some of the previous Olympic entries here), but when you’re trying to pull together a trip like this on a budget, you’re going to have to forego some amenities. During our whole trip (nine days), we didn’t shave or sleep indoors at all. We either slept in sleeping bags in the car at rest stops or in a tent in the mountains. Ours was a very outdoorsy college, so we were able to rent a large amount of camping gear from the recreation department. Our diet wasn’t the healthiest, either. I remember a lot of Cheez-Its and an apple every now and then.

Anyway, we got out there early enough to have a day without any plans before attending our first event. I forget if it was a state park or a national forest somewhere, but we parked in the parking lot and used cross-country skis to head in and scout a spot to set up camp.

The snow was pretty deep, and if you tried walking through it without snowshoes or skis, you’d sink up to your knees or so. When we first arrived, it was snowing pretty hard and it was starting to get dark, so we had to find a spot and set up camp pretty fast. We skied off the main trail and uphill into a wooded area where we weren’t likely to get mowed over by snowmobiles. We made a few sharp turns to get through the trees…something that can be tricky in tight quarters if you’re wearing skis that are taller than you are. We found a spot that would work, then skied back out to the car to grab our backpacks and gear. We hurried back in, set up camp, then warmed up some food and turned in for the night. (I think up until that point I had only camped in someone’s backyard overnight a single time. Between worrying about getting buried by a snow squall, being afraid of freezing to death, and hearing coyotes howling all night, it was a pretty intimidating experience for me.)

We spent two nights there, and on the second morning we broke camp to head to our first Olympic event. As we packed up everything and made sure we didn’t leave anything behind, we prepared to ski back out to the car. We attached our skis and buckled on our packs. Jeremy went first, heading back downhill toward the main trail. I brought up the rear.

On the way down, I approached one of those sharp turns a little too quickly. I had plenty of experience using cross-country skis, but I wasn’t accustomed to wearing a pack that was heavy enough to throw off my center of gravity. I took the turn like I normally would have, but between the deep powder and unusual weight distribution, my legs made the turn, by my upper body kept going. I biffed right there in the snow.

Remember what I said about walking in snow that deep without snowshoes or skis? Now imagine you’re lying face down in that kind of snow while wearing a backpack that’s pushing down on you. Every time you try to push yourself up with your arms, your arms sink back into the snow. I don’t even remember what I did to get back upright again; I must’ve packed the snow or grabbed some small trees or something, but I’m sure I looked like some kind of sedated walrus or something as I tried getting my feet back under me while wearing a puffy jacket and a backpack.

Anyway, the memories are mostly good ones. The bad ones just add a little variety. I’m thankful to have been able to go when I did, because if I were going to do it all again, there were some things I was willing to tolerate back then that I’m no longer willing to put up with now.

I hear that Salt Lake City is in the running to host the 2030 Winter Olympics. I don’t really see myself going, but if I did, I can’t say I’d be willing to drive there from an East Coast state, sleep in a tent (or in a car, for that matter) for more than a week in freezing temperatures 28 years after the first time I did it. Also, while Cheez-Its may still be on the menu, I think they’d be a much smaller portion of my overall diet than they were back then. I’m not totally shutting the door on the possibility of going, but I think I’m a tentative “no” for 2030.

Lord God, this life is full of memories, good and bad. Thanks for both kinds, and please help us to keep our focus on You as we age, and not get wrapped up about the things we can no longer do. Please grant safety and health to those participating in the games, as well as to those in attendance, and many, many thanks for a warm, comfortable bed and indoor plumbing! Amen

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You’re Not Needed, But You ARE Invited

Here’s a question with a twist. Were you ever on a team or in a group of people that was trying to accomplish a certain task, and you felt like you had the task well in hand? I’m guessing yes.

We’ve all been there, but here’s the twist. In that same situation, did someone else then unnecessarily join your team? I’m talking, like, “we don’t even need you, but we’re happy to have you along.” It could be someone that’s genuinely a delight to work with, or maybe someone that tells the best stories or has a tremendous sense of humor. Whatever it is about them…yeah, you’re happy they’re working with you, but in all honesty, you’d accomplish your task just fine without them.

That’s God, dealing with us. Granting someone else salvation is completely His doing. Each of us is powerless to grant it to someone, even if we desperately want them to come to a saving faith in Christ.

And yet…He’s overjoyed to include us as part of His process of moving in this world. If He wanted to, He could work out His plan for a specific individual’s salvation in a way that cuts all other people out of the process. That’s not how He works though. He loves including His followers as instruments of His plan. We’re unnecessary components, but it’s His pleasure to have us along for the ride.

If you’re a Christian, you’ve been given spiritual gifts that are meant to be used for the benefit of Christ’s kingdom. It’s up to you whether or not you use them, but He wants you to jump in. If you choose not to employ them it’s not going to foil His plans, but I imagine He’ll be disappointed that you chose not to use what He gave you. It’s like keeping a Lamborghini parked in the garage because you don’t want to get it scratched or dirty; it’s ensuring something highly specialized does not get used for its intended purpose.

So today, if you’re presented with the opportunity to accept God’s extended hand to go along with Him on an adventure, you can accept the invitation and be caught up into something that may make an eternal difference for someone, or you can choose to skip it and make the highlight reel of your life that you’ll see in Heaven a little bit shorter.

The choice is up to you.