One of the most life-giving things I get to do is announce for several of Sonora High School’s sports teams. Each game, each sport, each team has a unique character and flavor that keep me energized and on my toes.
This season I added something to my repertoire that I haven’t been intentional about before: I have been praying by name for the players and coaches of the teams I announce for. I haven’t been as consistent as I’d hoped but when they come to mind, I pray; when I see them before the game or get a brief conversation with one or two (like when a flag football player comes up to the booth to sing the national anthem), I’ve ask if there’s something specific I can pray for. The responses have ranged from “huh? I don’t know” to “wow! Thank you!” And, quite selfishly, I’ve asked God to show me very specific answers to prayer … some sign that he’s hearing my prayers (I know he is) and working in their lives in response to my prayers.
The real purpose of this particular post, though, is to see if I could embed a playoff bracket on my site! Yes, it’s playoff time for fall sports, and Sonora’s volleyball and flag football teams are both in. Our boys football team–the reigning California state champions for their division–are also undefeated going into their last regular season game on Halloween and are hoping to go deep into playoffs again, maybe even to repeat last year’s run to the title game.
Our girls volleyball team is the #1 seed in the division, meaning that as long as they win, they’ll play at home until the championship. They won Round 1 last night, host the quarter finals tomorrow, and have a good chance at hosting the semi-finals on Nov 4. Regional Championship, if they make it, will be on Saturday, Nov 8.
If you’re in the area, come out to join us for any of these games. Keep an eye on the bracket below.
Spending some time with God this morning, dealing with my own stuff (we all have stuff, don’t we?), I came across these words recorded by one of his ancient prophets, Micah:
“You do not stay angry forever, But delight to show mercy.”
Those words brought great comfort to me, who give God plenty of reason to be angry—and, therefore, plenty of opportunity for God to show me mercy.
And then I thought of our world, and particularly our nation, and how seldom—and how poorly—we think of mercy. We lean more toward the word justice, I think, whether calling for it, crying out for it, or lamenting its absence around us. Justice and mercy seem to be at odds with each other … but are they really?
The word “delight” jumped out at me. Not a word I use much, or feel much, in my own life, and certainly not in the context of mercy. Sometimes, I think, if we’re honest ourselves—if I’m honest with myself—we almost hate to see mercy granted … at least for someone else.
And then we come face to face with God, who, according to Micah, “delights to show mercy.” Let that sink in: God DELIGHTS to show mercy! He enjoys it, loves it, gets a kick out of it, is thrilled by it.
Mercy isn’t the opposite of justice, it’s the antidote for injustice.
I’m going to try today to delight right along with God in the mercy he shows me. Maybe you could, too.
And then, if you want (as I do) for our nation and our world to be a better place, then let’s see if we can work on delighting in mercy not just for ourselves but for others, too.
This past week an aunt died, a friend’s mother died, a too-young client started hospice care—barely a year after her husband’s sudden death and six months after her sister’s. Two weeks ago, I was called out twice as a chaplain to sit with families who had just experienced unexpected death. This week also marked forty-five years since cancer stole my teenage brother’s adulthood.
Death. An uninvited and unwelcome visitor whose looming shadow darkens the brightest of days.
In this season of Lent, Christians intentionally sit in the shadow of death, thoughtfully ponder the cost of our own sins, consider the One who endured rejection, mockery, and torture on the way to his own death … a death that, according to the Bible, should be ours. Lent is the night storm before the calm of Easter’s glorious resurrection sunrise. Lent is supposed to be dark.
I can’t do it. I can’t do the dark. Amidst a daily news cycle dominated by lies, anger, retribution, and hatred of anything other; punctuated by wars and earthquakes; surrounded by death near and far … it is hard to sit in the darkness and hold out hope even for an Easter celebration I know will come.
When I have spoken with friends about the times we are living in, I have most often heard the complaint that “no one is doing anything” or the bewildered question, “what can we do?” What action we might take see seems futile, fruitless, ineffective. We seem destined to wait it out—“this, too, shall pass”—and are left to wonder whether we will recognize anything when it does pass. These have all been my own complaints, questions, wonderings.
Hope. Hope is hard. It is hardest in the dark, when there is not even a flicker of light. I’m told the one thing worse than being alone is being in pitch black. In the deepest dark, there are no reference points, no direction, no way of knowing north from east, up from down. In the darkest deeps, hope is impossible to find … unless a light comes.
Here is what I know: the most life-giving lament holds onto something greater than hope—it clings desperately to faith … faith in something, Someone greater than all I know; greater than the darkness that surrounds me; greater than the evil that pervades the days; greater than any other power or authority; greater, even, than anything I can do on my own. That faith … that Someone … gives me strength to do what I can, no matter how little or trite it may seem. And so I do what I can.
What can I do? I can bring a flickering candle into dark spaces. How? For me, it might mean sitting after midnight with an old woman whose lifeless, twenty-year companion is still laying on her living room floor as she stares death in the face. Sometimes it’s by delivering a special treat to a client on hospice, or even the mundane task of helping order their financial affairs. Sometimes it’s attending a young friend’s performance and hanging around afterward to give her a hug.
When I stand on the drizzly sidelines to watch a former student’s soccer game, it’s a candle in the dark. When I get on the microphone and announce the next batter while the throbbing beat of her favorite rapper (ugh!) blares through the speakers, it brings just a little light to her life. When I ride with a police officer and allow him to be himself—with no judgment of his unfiltered language or complaints—the weight of the creative evil he sees every day becomes a shared, lightened burden.
When I can listen to the stories of those hurt by the hands or words of people badly representing Jesus, and simply say, “I’m so sorry you experienced that,” their pain is lessened just a bit.
I can’t bring light to every dark corner, but I can bring a little light to every place I go. If my candle can light someone else’s, and theirs can light another’s, and theirs yet another … then soon all the candles will shine in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome. And with the hope of that ever-spreading light we can say with the ancient poet, In the dark shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.
You may not be able to light the whole world, but you can bring light to a dark corner. So now a question: What dark corner will you encounter today, and how can you—how will you—light a candle there?
My dad was an extrovert—he would talk to anyone, anywhere, about anything. Sometimes it was annoying, sometimes embarrassing, always it was just dad being dad. The rest of us in the family are introverts to varying degrees but I am my father’s son: I, too, will talk to anyone, anywhere, about anything. And more than anything else, accents will get me started … though I find myself increasingly inept at identifying them.
And so it was that accents were the opening for a conversation with a couple next to me at a coffee shop recently. Of course, they insisted that I guess where they were from; and of course, I was wrong. Twice. (I started with South Africa, then went to New Zealand, before correctly landing on Australia.)
The iced coffee having been broken, they dove right in: What do you love about America? It was an honest, probing question with no hint of malice toward the nation they were touring for weeks, if not months. (They briefly described an itinerary that had them visiting national parks from the southeast to California and back to the northeast.)
My hesitation in answering was revealing, both to them and to myself. It’s not that I don’t love America; it’s just that there’s so much not to love these days. Tucked between a depressing presidential debate and the nation’s 248th birthday, our deeply honest conversation began with three things I am grateful for as an American: *opportunity, *innovation, and *freedom. Each is a real strength inextricably connected to the others and each demands an asterisk, like a speed record aided by tailwinds or a home run record tainted by performance-enhancing drugs.
*Opportunity. Since long before her birth, America has been known as the land of opportunity. Vast landscapes invite farming and ranching, urban development and exploration. Thirteen years of “free” education for both boys and girls. (Mostly) equal rights, irrespective of gender, race, politics, religion, and so on.
The asterisk here is best summarized with the Orwellian line, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” In spite of the Declaration of Independence’s bold claim that “all men are created equal,” slaves were not counted as equal even for census purposes for the first century of America’s existence. While opportunity in schools, sports, business, politics is theoretically unlimited, any number of factors still raise practical barriers for whole swaths of our citizenry. Clearly we are still a work in progress.
*Innovation. There is some question about who first suggested the idea of “adapt or die,” but it is an appropriate way to describe the endurance of what George Washington once described as a great experiment. Whether in politics or manufacturing, energy or healthcare, when America has faced crisis, her ability to innovate and adapt has ensured her survival. And yet this innovation has been practiced on our foundational rule of law, the Constitution, that has been amended only 17 times since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. It would seem that our Founding Fathers were not only innovative but also wary of excessive innovation; or at least they knew that innovation requires a strong and stable foundation.
The asterisk to innovation is the individualism it breeds. Though our money still declares “in God we trust,” a truer motto would be “in ourselves we trust” or the more common sentiment, “pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” Innovation breeds differentiation, which in turn breeds competition, suspicion, division. In the experiment that we call the United States, there is an ongoing tension between “united” and “states.”
*Freedom. America’s greatest strength is undoubtedly her freedom. Not only the specific freedoms enshrined in the Constitution—speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government—but the broader environment of freedom that stems from those. We have the freedom to choose where to live, where to attend college, what type of work to do. We have the freedom to leave when we want and to return when we want. We even have freedom to do things that may not be healthy for us.
The asterisk on freedom is the incredible cost and immense responsibility that come with it. Freedom, of course, is never unlimited. Freedom of speech may include the freedom to lie, but not when the lie causes harm to someone’s reputation (defamation). Freedom of assembly includes anti-government rallies, but not when the rallies turn into riots. Freedom with limits is little more than anarchy.
Freedom may be America’s greatest strength, but it is also her greatest challenge. This is the most frequent theme when I talk with people in or from other nations: the social cost of freedom. On American news they see rampant crime, gun violence, political and religious scandals; they see rising division in our nation and candidates in a presidential debate (I use both terms—presidential and debate—very loosely) who sound more like junior high boys arguing on a playground about who is toughest. I long for the day when our nation finally awakens to the incredible cost—no, the insane cost—of our freedom to “keep and bear arms.”
Is this the best we have?
The second question asked by my new acquaintances from Down Under was phrased more incredulously: in a land of 350 million people, is this really the best you can offer the world? They recognize what so many others both at home and abroad know: for better or worse, America is a world leader. And also for better or worse, the individual we elect to lead our nation will be a de facto world leader.
One headline after last week’s debate was telling: one disappointed, one lied and deflected. And in four months, we have to choose between these two? This is the curse of our two-party system and reveals the lie spoken by so many well-meaning parents and pundits, that anyone can be president. If only that were true. If only, come the first Tuesday in November, America could write in anyone other than the two men whose names will be at the top of the ballot.
I know there are many Americans who don’t like our elevated place in the world, or at least don’t like the significant cost of that role to our own nation. But the fact is that we are a world leader and will be a world leader until we either hide ourselves under a rock or continue to behave so ludicrously that we become a laughingstock and a shadow of our once-great nation. And the cost of allowing either of those to happen will be exponentially greater in every way.
So what do I love about America? I love that in four years, we will have two different candidates. I love that—in spite of my profound concerns about what will happen in our nation and the world over those four years—I can still have hope that these United States of America will rise above where we are today.
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” —Frederick Buechner
I’m a PA announcer for high school sports. What started as an event—MC’ing a breast cancer awareness night for my daughter’s volleyball team—has turned into an eight-years-and-counting side gig, all volunteer, announcing four sports and a couple parades a year.
This year I was asked to add softball to my repertoire. The team had never had an announcer and the only audio they had was a single 12” karaoke speaker. I knew if we were going to take the program up a level like they wanted to, we were going to need something more, so I visited the boys baseball team, watched their announcer, saw what he did for music, and scoped out the sound system. Then I decided to see if I could get people to help me with the cost of buying a similar system.
As I planned a GoFundMe campaign, I set my sights on raising $1,000. But I needed a tag line, something to catch the ear, to quickly tell people the what and why behind the ask. I thought about what I do and why and landed on “A Voice For Good.” A little online sleuthing showed only one organization using that name—a nonprofit music group out of Utah with a similar motivation but different methods—and no apparent copyright issues, so I adopted it as my tag line. But the phrase has become so much more.
As I’ve reflected on the various jobs I’ve held and meaningful work I’ve done throughout my life, I’ve realized that “a voice for good” is an accurate summation of who I am and what I’ve done: teacher, trainer, radio operator, pastor, chaplain … all rely on using my voice, and all are aimed in one way or another at bringing good, whether that means truth, wisdom, and encouragement or peace, safety, and healing.
There are deeper lessons, too:
I’ve been given a gift (my voice); some gifts come with responsibility to use them for good and for others.
There’s a lot of bad in the world; people—especially kids—need to hear good.
I have fun doing what I do!
If what Frederick Buechner said is true (see the quote at the top of this post), I must be in the place God has for me. And that’s good.
