Monday Morning Check-In

Reds vs Cards Series
This Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the 1st place Reds will be facing their Division rivals the Cardinals. I fell in love with baseball watching the Reds win the 1990 World Series as a kid. I remember during the Strike Shortened Season that the Reds and the Astros kept going back and forth at the top of the division. It was fun to watch. This year the Reds and the Cards are doing the same thing. For the first time in my life I have gotten to see the Reds in GABP while they were in first place, and that atmosphere is electric! I am so excited and nervous about this series. Hopefully the Reds can take 2 out of 3 games.


Samson and Focus
This summer our High School Guys Sunday School Class has been going through the book of Judges. Samson's story starts off in Judges 13. People here the name Samson and they think about his strength, but we spent most of our time talking about his focus (or the lack thereof). We dug into the first half of his story.

Samson's parents hadn't been able to have children before him. The Angel of the Lord appeared to them and let them know that their child would have a specific purpose in life. The term the Bible uses for this is Nazarite. To be a Nazarite would mean that you would abstain from alcohol, cutting your hair, and from being in the near vicinity from corpses of any kind. To take the Nazarite vow was to commit yourself to a specific purpose and setting yourself aside.

The interesting thing about Samson is that he didn't do to good of a job with his whole Nazarite Vow thing. He lacked the focus to accomplish the job at hand. It makes you wonder what he could have accomplished as Israel's leader if he had made better decisions. If you read his story though he comes across as a brash, smug young man who was pretty stuck on himself. Not only that he tended to fly off the handle pretty easily. His fellow Isrealites didn't even support him, in fact they turned him over to their enemies at one point.

Accomplishing any goal takes focus and sacrifice. You have to be willing to give up things that you enjoy that could get in your way. You can see what your priorities are in life by looking at what you sacrifice the most for. Whatever that is, it is the thing that you are most focused on, and chances are the thing you will obtain or achieve during your life.

Indoor Soccer
A friend of mine invited me to fill in for someone on his indoor soccer team last night. I told him I could help out, but that I hadn't played soccer since elementary school. It was a lot of fun too. I will admit that the only shot I got I almost whiffed on, but I also did some stuff right (I got to head a ball too which made me feel pretty legit). Chances are though I will never get invited back because of my newb status. We did however beat the top team in the Rec League.

Isaiah 117 Challenge
It is hard to believe it, but the summer is nearly over and that also means that it is almost time for the Isaiah 117 Challenge. In case you haven't heard me say it before, the I117C is one of my favorite parts of the summer. It is such a relational service project. I love getting to know the new students and watch our students step up as leaders and kingdom workers. The I117C starts this Sunday, August 15th and goes all the way to Wednesday, August 18th. We end it with a community picnic too and everybody is invited. This year's picnic will be at 6:00pm on Wednesday, August 18th at the East End Community Garden at the intersection of Strader and Wool Street. The more the merrier so be sure to be there!