Tiger Woods: Not perfect ?!?!

This past week the world has watched in fascination as Tiger Woods perfect image has come into question.  Everyone wants to know what happened.  What are the real problems at the root of this incident, who is to blame? There are rumors swirling to the point where even if we did hear the truth many would not believer it over their own construed reality.  There are lots of things that are intriguing about this debacle, but the question that keeps coming to my mind is why are we so intrigued? Why do people feel they need to get to the bottom of this? 

I think a big reason so many people have been drawn into this story is that Tiger and his wife Elin seem so perfect, so clean cut.  I mean, look at them over there.  They certainly look perfect.  Tiger has carved out this perfect image as if he has everything together.  He is the ultimate competitor, the pinnacle of his sport.  He went to Stanford.  I could probably spend a lot more time talking about his feats and accomplishments painting the picture of perfection, but it wouldn't matter.  In one feel swoop Tiger's perfection came crashing (pun intended) down.  If that didn't convince you, he even admitted not being perfect in his public statement.  No one is perfect. 

 In this world the only thing we love more than watching people rise to the top is when they fall, and fall hard.  We like people who seemingly have everything making mistakes because it makes us feel better about our situation.  We think if we were only in their situation we wouldn't do the dumb things they do. We wouldn't make the mistakes they make.  We pass off our sins as more the result of our situation than of ourselves.  The reality is we would still be sinners no matter what great fortune or amazing abilities we might have.  We are flawed. No one is perfect. No one is perfect except Jesus, that is.

It's almost Christmas. a time to celebrate the Perfect Son of God coming into the world to live a perfect life so that we might benefit from his righteousness.  So instead of worrying about Tiger and what his sin might be or what struggles his family might have, instead I suggest we hope in the One who never sinned.  I know it is hard to believe that someone could live life and never sin.  I have friends for whom that is a major stumbling block...but from Scripture we understand that sin is the cause of death.  So Jesus' resurrection is proof that he was sinless, because death could not conquer someone who was sinless.  Fortunately, Jesus is able to cover us all with his holiness and goodness and our sin is done away with.  We too can conquer sin and death because of what Christ accomplished in his death and resurrection. 

So whether you are awesome like Tiger Woods or just a regular guy like me, take this Christmas season to be fascinated by the one who truly is perfect.

Things you don't know about Thanksgiving

I'm really not going to say anything, just providing a link to this TIME article. I think I'm gonna start Celebrating Franksgiving. I dig turkey.
One more thing. Thanks be to God who leads us in his triumph thanks be to God who's got the victory!

Tuesday Tunes Be Thankful

So It's Tuesday a day I'll regularly taking a look at music. New and old, fast and slow, Christian and Non-Christian plain old music.  Hopefully all good stuff so that people actually want to listen.  Anyway I was thinking about thanksgiving songs and the main ones that I know of are by Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant and Adam Sandler, The Thanksgiving Song.  But this year I stumbled upon this song by Natalie Cole, Be Thankful.  My favorite part is in the chorus it goes,

"Rollin' over, seein' my baby's eyes, uh
Is enough to say, "I thank you, Lord""

There are a lot of reasons to say thanks to God and my wife is certainly one of theme, especially in the AM when I wake up see her smile even though she's the one who has been up feeding and changing Colette while I sleep.  Gotta love her. So I am thankful to Jesus for her.  Very thankful.

By the way Nate Dogg has his own Be Thankful song, it's on the Album Christmas on Death Row. Ah, rappers.

Child Care Questions

 So I'm a fairly new father of 3.  Both my wife and I work and once Dani finishes her 3 month maternity leave we need to make some decisions about what to do with the kids.  We have a neighbor who has provided childcare who really loves our kids and is super flexible (and cheap!).  We are just worried about if our kids will get enough care if we send the boatload to her place with a new infant in tow.  There are other kids in her house, and it is all that the 2 of us can do to care for 3 kids alone.  So we don't think it's fair to the kids or to our neighbor.

The other part of the equation is with all those kids we know they will be watching more TV.  We know they already watch a good deal more than we would like. I guess it's not uncommon.  This new study shows that preschoolers watch about 2.4 HOURS of TV at in home day care.  That is likely conservative since the study is self reporting.  There really is no substitute for family care of your kids.  This  months has been a fabulous time for my wife to spend so much time with the kids, we are sad to see it go, and look forward to the time where we can make that situation work.  For now the hunt is on, prayerful decisions need to be made, anyone got any leads?

Cuse Hoops

Friday's are going to be a break from the routine. Fun Friday's if you will. For me fun usually comes in the form of sports. So to let you know I'm a Big Syracuse University fan. I even cheer for the football team. Seriously. Anyway I just want to highlight Scoop Jardine's 22 pt 6 assist performance off the bench in Syracuse's 95-73 upset of the #13 Cal Bears. On the menu tonight UNC Tar Heels, Yum.

What I love about sports is the beginning of the season. The hopes and dreams of every team. Every team I've ever been on has always had the belief that we would be amazing and make a run toward the championship. From little league to my High School Soccer and basketball teams, to each and every SU basketball team; hope springs eternal.

Sometimes I think why God has brought about so many different works in his redemptive drama. From Creation to Noah, to Abraham and the covenant with Israel, to the times of the Judges, Kings, Jeremiah and the Jews return to Israel, and especially to Jesus ushering in of a new covenant with humanity. God continually used new means and new "era's" to accomplish his work. He knows how we work and wants to present us with a clean slate, a new beginning over and over again. That's the Gospel in a nutshell. The old is gone the new is come. The sins of the past are forgiven, now we can strive to live for Christ and simply look ahead. This is the day that we are faithful. Here is our chance to be amazing, inspiring, perfect, winners. If we don't have this view we are in trouble, and bound to fail. So let's hope, let's dream, let's do this knowing that we can in Christ.

Oh yeah and let's beat those arrogant bums from Chapel Hill.

Decisions, Decisions

Yesterday I was looking at Time's list of the 25 Best Blogs. I'm aspirational like that. Once in a while, anyway. From observing them I realized that all these blogs have one central concept and people come back because they know exactly what they are getting. I'm not gonna do that. I know that derails my plan to get into the top 25, but I'm gonna leave that to the career bloggers anyway. I have a church to run for goodness sakes.

Instead I'm going to take the Paul route and seek to become all things to all people like in 1 Cor 9:19-23 What I really want to do is look at many different areas of life and see how and where they intersect with God's plan. So I'm going to have daily themes. Politics, Theology, Music, Sports, and Culture. My hope is each of these topics will connect with people on a personal level and then they will begin to think about everything they see and think through a Biblical lens. I think it will help me do the same. We'll see.

Introductions

Welcome to the Blog. I'm gonna take a moment to introduce myself and look back just a little bit, but I'm really hoping that this blog will be primarily forward looking and inward looking as I try and do that personally.
So anyway the peculiar pilot. Well first, I'm not that strange. I mean everyone is peculiar in some way. My usual diversions from straight lacedness comes in the form of barely rhyming free verse to classic song tunes in order to get my kids to 1) Be Quiet 2) stop fighting 3) clean. Other than that I'm fairly main stream.
It is my situation that is different however. I'm a white guy. I pastor an Indian Church. This usually doesn't happen. First, there aren't a whole lot of Indians in the States. Second, I'm kinda young and most of the Pastors in the Indian community in edition to being Indian are also older. There is a great deal of respect for elders in the culture and being a young white guy breaks the mold. It's a bit Peculiar if I do say so myself.
The Pilot aspect has to do with being a pastor as well, not with an avocation or second career or anything. Pastors really don't have time for that kind of thing (Instead we use our time writing with the hope that people will be drawn in.) Anyway, My aim is to guide people safely to my final destination. I'm going to heaven, and I have been entrusted with the task of teaching people to know God and live for him. If I do this and do it well I will Save myself and My hearers (1 Tim 4:16) So that's the task. Fly the ship: get it to up in the air, fly smoothly and land safely. I'm hoping this will be a vehicle for accomplishing that. I'm hoping you'll take a seat and enjoy the flight.