Choosing A Team

My favorite NFL team is the Kansas City Chiefs.  Since I was born and raised in northwest Missouri, you might think it was quite natural to follow them, but that really wasn't the case.  I never followed the NFL during my formative childhood years.  I loved baseball (still do!) and I enjoyed following the Missouri Tigers in college football and basketball.  But, the NFL never caught my attention until late 1989.

I moved to Sioux City, Iowa in December of 1988.  When football season came in 1989, I discovered I was a square peg in a round hole.  Everyone I hung around with loved the NFL.  I ate countless lunches that Fall in total silence because I had no idea what was going on in the NFL.  Finally, I decided to start following this sport so I would know what everyone was talking about.  It's tough to follow a sport without any team loyalties, so I started the process of picking a team.

You would think I would have selected the Chiefs to start with, but that wasn't the case.  I had a specific set of criteria I used to select my team.  First, I wanted to follow a team that no one else I knew followed - that way I could argue with everyone!  Second, I wanted to follow a team in the Midwest so I could watch them on TV and maybe in person.  Third, they needed to have some moral values.  Armed with this information, I settled on... the Cincinnati Bengals!

I know what you are thinking - you can understand how they filled the first two criteria, but what about the third?  Sam Wyche was the coach of the Bengals that year and he did a couple of things that caught my attention.  He refused to allow female reporters into the locker room - which made sense to me.  The league disagreed with him, though, and made him scratch that rule.  The second action by Coach Wyche was a classic!

The Bengals were playing against Cleveland at home.  The officials made a call that the rowdy home crowd did not appreciate.  They began booing loudly and throwing things onto the field.  The officials asked Coach Wyche to tell the crowd to stop throwing things on the field.  He took the microphone on the sidelines and stepped out onto the field.  He pleaded with the crowd to stop throwing things on the field, because "you live in Cincinnati, not Cleveland!"  I loved it (there is a major rivalry between those two teams) - but the officials didn't and gave him a "sportsmanship" penalty.

The day I decided to be a Bengals fan, I went home from work, putzed around a bit, and flipped on the TV.  There was a football game on and the Bengals were on!  I sat down and began rooting for my beloved Bengals when the Mrs. walked into the room.  She saw me watching the game and questioned what I was doing.  She noted that I didn't like pro football and I replied, "I love pro football, and the Bengals are my favorite team."  She asked me, "Since when?" - to which I replied, "Since this afternoon!"  She rolled her eyes and walked away.

As an FYI, after the Bengals served as the NFL's doormat for many long and depressing years.  I finally gave up on them and switched to the Chiefs.  I have no plans to switch again, no matter how bad they are playing.

Choosing a football team is not a major choice for most of us.  And, if we get disappointed in the team we choose, we can switch loyalties without offending too many people.  However, choosing to follow Jesus Christ is a major decision that we should never vacillate on.  God audibly affirmed Jesus when He said, "This is My Son whom I love; with Him I am well pleased."  God gave us the gift of His Son so that we might have eternal life.  1 John 5:11-12 clearly says, "God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life."  To refuse to accept the gift of Jesus is to choose everlasting death over eternal life.  Is that really what we want to do?  Let's become great fans of Jesus, accept the gift of salvation He offers us, and the promise of eternal life is ours!

Unexpected Blessings

We are fortunate to have a Culver's just about a quarter-mile southeast of our house.  For the nearly ten years we have lived in our house, we have enjoyed meals at Culver's.  Our oldest son worked there while he was in high school, which was a great job - we got a family discount!  It has also become a tradition for the family to eat there after church on Sunday nights with some friends from church.

If you have never been to Culver's, I will do my best to describe it.  It looks like a fast-food restaurant, but it doesn't quite fit that description.  Their hamburgers are excellent and made-to-order - no warming tray for precooked sandwiches .  Mr. Interface, one of the Microsoft programmers I work with, insists on eating there every time he comes to Rochester - he loves their Butterburgers!  They are quite good...

They also have frozen custard - which is ice cream on steroids!  They post their "Flavor of the Day" on their sign along the highway, and I always check the sign.  You just can't drive by some flavors!  I like all the flavors except the ones with coconut in them.  I don't understand why you would ruin perfectly good ice cream by putting coconut in it. 

This past Sunday found me at Culver's with my good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Musical Lovers and their youngest son.  The Mrs. and Mr. Youngster had eaten earlier, so I was the only one there from my family.  We had finished eating and were sitting around joking and laughing (as usual) when a Culver's employee approached our table.  In his hands were two pumpkin-pecan Concrete Mixer malts.  He asked if we would like to have them - free of charge!  Naturally, I agreed.  It turns out that Mr. Musical Lover doesn't like pumpkin, so his wife and I enjoyed the Concrete Mixers.  Culver's wasn't through with us though, soon another employee walked up with a caramel cashew sundae and offered it to Mr. Musical Lover.  He gladly accepted it.  We were all three in heaven as we enjoyed our free and unexpected desserts!  I believe the freebies were given to us (good customers) because it was their 10th anniversary of the restaurant.  The Mrs. and Mr. Youngster chose a bad night to eat early...

In Malachi 3:10, God offers us a challenge, "Bring the whole tithe (10%) into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it."  I have heard many people say they can't afford to give a tithe to the church.  From personal experience, I found that isn't true.  The Mrs. and I have been tithing from the day we were married.  Yes, there were times that money was extremely tight and giving a tithe to God was an act of faith.  But we quickly found that God will take care of us when we trust Him.  And this verse is 100% true - He will bless you abundantly more than you can ever imagine when you trust Him with the tithe.  I was excited to receive the unexpected blessing of a pumpkin-pecan Concrete Mixer from Culver's the other night, but it pales in comparison to the unexpected blessings God has poured out in my life!

Pigskin Designs

Mr. Youngster and I have been enjoying the unseasonably warm (for Minnesota) November temperatures by tossing the pigskin around.  Football is really not my sport - I love baseball.  I love the pop of a baseball when it hits the glove.  I love the crack of the bat.  The baseball was made to be thrown.  Even a young child can throw a baseball with pretty good accuracy. 

Whoever designed the football was a sadist.  I know it can be thrown accurately for long distances - I have seen it happen on TV.  But the football was not designed to be thrown.  It's shape is all wrong for throwing.  I think it was designed to bounce erratically on the ground to drive the players nuts.  When I throw the football, I don't get a nice, tight spiral.  I can usually hit Mr. Youngster at the numbers, but it rarely is going to have a nice spiral.  More often than not it resembles a wounded duck.

Mr. Youngster, on the other hand, can throw the football with a spiral most of the time.  However, he is sadly confused.  He apparently thinks I walk on my hands, because his tosses always come right at my feet!  It doesn't matter if he is standing close to me or 30 yards away, it always comes right to my feet.  I am now nursing a sore pinky finger on my right hand because I tried to reach down and catch one of his passes.  It hit the ground and took a typical football bounce (who knows where it is going) and jammed my pinky finger.

We often question the design of many items we buy; we have all experienced the frustration of poorly designed products.  I have spent hundreds of dollars fixing cars that were poorly designed.  I have thrown away toys days after Christmas because they couldn't stand up to child's play.  But God's designs are perfect in every case.  As we look through the creation story at the beginning of Genesis, we repeatedly read the phrase "it was good."  When He created Adam and Eve, the phrase changed to "it was very good."  While we may not like certain features of our bodies, God made us so we must be "very good."  We don't have to look like a Hollywood movie star to be a star in God's eyes.  We just need to use the talents and gifts He gave us to fulfill the purpose He designed us for and we will be perfectly satisfied with our lives.

Not Going Anywhere

Last week I alluded to a time when Big Brother and I got stuck in Dad's pickup.  Due to popular demand, I will share what happened.

Big Brother and I were both in high school the year Dad fell and broke his leg.  He is a tough bird - he went to a basketball game with the broken leg before he went to the doctor.  After visiting the doctor, his leg was in a cast and his mobility was greatly reduced.

Much to our chagrin, that meant Big Brother and I had more chores to do before we headed off to school.  We were climbing out of bed at 0-dark:30 to feed the cows every morning.  Big Brother always drove the pickup, because he was older and a "better driver."  Did I mention it was pretty muddy at the time?

He drove the pickup up to the silage pit and we filled the back of the pickup with silage.  Then we headed for the pasture to feed the cows.  To get to that pasture we had to drive on a path alongside a corn field.  The path was pretty muddy, but it was just slick - not deep.  On that particular morning, Big Brother slid in the sloppy-mud a little too much and slid off the path into the corn field.  Unlike the path, it was a deep and sticky mud!

Being a "better driver" and headstrong, he was determined to drive back out.  We were in 4-wheel drive, so he gave it the gas and attempted to pull back up to the path.  No dice.  He threw it in reverse and gunned it and made a little progress, but was soon stopped.  Back into 2nd gear and and a lot of gas and we moved forward a few feet.  He tried to rock the pickup to get it out, going forward and back repeatedly.  It soon became evident that we weren't going anywhere.  Finally he gave up and shut the engine off.

We opened our doors and stepped out of the pickup.  Notice I didn't say we stepped DOWN out of the pickup - we literally stepped out.  The ground was at an even level with the floorboards.  I have never seen a vehicle stuck in the mud as good as that one was!

We walked a mile back to the house and broke the bad news to Dad.  We changed clothes and headed off to school, leaving Dad to figure out how to get the pickup out.  When we got home that night, Dad was not very happy with us!  He took the tractor over to the field and was unable to pull the pickup out with the tractor.  Our neighbor had a small Caterpillar in the next field over, so he asked his neighbor to pull it out.  The Cat couldn't pull it out either.  It took both - the tractor and the Cat to yank that pickup, full of silage, out of the mud!  Big Brother never does anything halfway!

David wrote the following words in Psalm 40, "I waited patiently for the LORD; He turned to me and heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the slimy pit out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand." This life is full of mud and mire.  Sin and temptations surround us on every side and threaten to pull us in where we will be unable to escape.  But God has the power to break the hold of sin and temptation on our lives.  He desires to set our feet on solid ground where we won't slip and slide.  This type of prayer is one that God will always answer.  Why would we trust anyone or anything else?