Weekends: The Marrow of Weekday Bones

It’s time for another weekend here in Tulsa. I know this, not because of the calendar nor because I have a wonderfully astute biological clock that monitors such things (I actually do, you know -- I can generally be within 2 minutes of actual time by guessing -- drives my daughter nuts!). It’s not even because I restlessly move from one work day to the next until my pre-set alarm clock doesn’t go off at some crazy-early morning hour. I simply know this by the rush hour traffic. 

I don’t know about other places around the country (actually, I do because I have lived in ten different states and 17 different cities. In fact, I’m the only one in my immediate family to live in all three ‘O’ states), but rush hour ‘round here starts at noon, with the lunch rush. Once folks catch sight of the weekend, it’s all over. Today’s post in my other blog http://www.thirty-onekings.blogspot.com talks about focus and clarity but it has nothing on these weekenders!

This weekend is particularly rough because the state fair has come to town. Have you ever wondered how they fit an entire state fair in one single town? Anyway, the lines are longer, the people are gruffer and more impatient than they normally are. They’re more apt to exchange paint in minor traffic scrapes and let it go if the damage isn’t too great and it’ll enable them to get on with their precious weekend. Some folks drive like they’ve been cracking cold ones since breakfast and you know they haven’t invaded the liquor stores yet. Humanity seems to be tossed out the window in drive-thru lines as well. After all, everyone knows those humanoid forms beyond the window aren't actually people and they don't have actual feelings (many of them enjoy their weekends like everyone else, but are forced to work anyway). 

I used to hate weekends because I had to work. I was so envious of wanting the weekend to myself, I never understood why people would actually do chores like getting their oil changed on a perfectly good weekend! The way I saw it, if fewer people came in on the weekend, the lesser the demand for me to be there working. Makes sense, right? 

Something else unique to this area: yield signs are invisible and speed limit signs are like swimsuits at the nude beach – people know they’re around somewhere but no one pays them much mind. And an interesting thing about speeding – the police don’t seem to do anything but contribute to the problem. My guess is one of two things: they’re either trying to get home to enjoy their weekend, or the weekend guys are like, “I came in for this?!”

One final thing I’d like to mention before I head out to my weekend entertainment... I’ve taken a keen interest in why turn signals never seem to work but the horns always do! More often than not, when I worked at the auto shop, we tested all the lighting components as well as the horn on every car that came through and it was the horn that didn’t work while all the turn signals did! I just don’t get it!

Okay – I’ve said my peace. I pray every one of you reading today not only makes it to your weekend in one piece, you also have a fun one, a safe one and survive until Monday. Hmm, something has me thinking a good upcoming topic would be coffee! 

Maybe I’ll see you at the quick lube tomorrow!

Blah!-g

 "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

                                    -- Michael Corleone, The Godfather, Part III

I'm back!

I couldn't resist. Because I'm maintaining two blogs and amassing fans and viewers by the hundredths (for those who remember how the decimal system works), I thought it'd only be appropriate to share my thoughts on......

Blogs!

I never paid much attention to blogs. For one, people sharing their dirty laundry is done with grandiose affect on Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, what should I care about anyone's opinion about the mundane and pointless?

The very name...blog...sounds weird. Let's look at the unofficial etymology of the word. Blah, meaning meaningless or rubbish and Og, which sounds a lot like (or rhymes with) fog, which means cloudy or limited view. Therefore put the two together and you have a limited view of rubbish. 

I don't know about you, but I go out of my way to make sure I have the best view possible when viewing rubbish! Especially the meaningless variety!

Well, thanks to my friend, Karen, I've come around. I've learned that not only are blogs a good source of creative perspective on a wide range of topics, or that they're a good way to express your own opinions (and we all have one about everything), it's a good way to better understand people in general. Sure, Facebook and Twitter offer snippets of thoughts and opinions, but oft times, blogs really get to the heart of the matter and discuss things in a fresh, unique way.

For instance, there are blogs about politics, religion, farming, gifting, re-gifting, sports. I'm sure we could even find a blog about watching the grass growing and comparisons of blade expansion by the inth degree. Something I care to keep up with? No, but it may offer an interesting perspective that I hadn't thought of before and it may give me some insight as to how other people in other places of the world think, what interests them...how I, if given the chance, could minister to them or serve them in some way. I guess the point that begs to be made is: everyone is important and everyone has value.

Personally, I don't care to know how or why grass grows because I'm just going to mow it anyway! But the person that thinks that's fascinating? I'd like to get to know that person.

So yea! for blogs!

I hope you keep reading mine, but I hope you will branch out and find others that stimulate your thoughts. If not, you can at least go to my other blog (thirty-onekings.blogspot.com). Oh, that was a cold and shameless plug).

Change of Address

As you will see simply by visiting, this is the third post on this blog. It's also going to be the last. However, I'm not disappearing entirely. I invite you to follow my new blog, thirty-onekings.blogspot.com

I'll mention now that the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm is staying here, too. If that's what you've been tuning in for, I really appreciate it and I apologize. I think the message can get lost in the humor sometimes if there's too much.

Anyway, without further ado...I hope to see you on the banks of the river (but not in van, like the late Chris Farley used to say).

-- MG

Life is Like....A Jigsaw Puzzle?

While watching Forest Gump for the umpteenth time the other day, I gave serious thought to one of the more popular gumpisms, "Life is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're going to get." My first thought was (which I assume would be similar to others'),  I hope I don't get one of those nasty orange-filled pieces.

In reality, we don't know what's ahead. All we can do is hope for the best, expect the worse and be happy with something in between. Actually -- that's the key to the gumpism -- being happy and making the most of what you get. Paul spoke of this in Philippians 4:12 -- I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. (NIV)

But I don't want to talk about boxes of chocolates because I don't buy them too often. They never have enough of my favorites (like caramel squares). Instead, I'd like to talk about jigsaw puzzles and I'm going to start it off with fat cells. I read a depressing article which stated that, although we can create new fat cells, we never actually get rid of the fat cells we have. When we lose weight, we're actually depleting all that gooey stuff within the fat cell. Likewise, when we gain weight, we refill all the old cells, then contribute to creating new ones. What does this have to do with jigsaw puzzles? I've been thinking lately that life might be like a big jigsaw puzzle. 

This is just a thought.

We start out with a set number of puzzle pieces that, put together, recreates the picture on the box top. In the beginning, all the pieces are sprawled out on the table and don't look like much of anything. Everyone's strategy is different, but I always start out by establishing the border and then in-filling the rest of it. Sometimes we catch glimpses of progress, sometimes it just confounds us.

Doesn't that sound like life? Everything starts out as a garbled picture of nothing until we reach that age of questions, when we start trying to figure out who we are; what we're here for, etc. For believers, the picture we're striving for is the one found within the Gospels -- Christ-likeness. A straight-forward task, sure, but it's never a straight-forward process. I think that, just like those nasty fat cells, we have a set number of pieces and each time we stray from our objective, more pieces are thrown onto the table. Our objective remains the same but now we've got extra pieces to fit into the mix -- and that makes it exponentially more difficult. But here is where life and puzzles and fat cells diverge.

We very well can't complete puzzles with more pieces than required. And it's progressively tougher to lose weight and stay in shape if all we do is add more cells to those we never even lose. But with life, those fat cells and extra pieces (sin) are completely taken away through the act of forgiveness. When Christ forgives us of our transgressions, He doesn't just bury them somewhere deep down inside, thus waiting to be added to at a later date; He actually cuts them out of our lives. In that way, we're free to get back to transforming our lives so we emulate the picture of Jesus. 

God, in His Glory, gave us the Bible as a guide. An instruction manual. A paint-by-the-numbers, if you will. The less we deviate from the picture, the more and the sooner we'll begin to look like it.  The more we deviate...well, you get the picture (or at least I hope you'll become the picture).

Gridiron Gods

Ah, it’s that time of year again! Children go back to school, cooler temperatures greet us in the morning and college football permeates every corridor of life as we know it. God bless America!

To the outsider, the college football can seem a little intense, ludicrous, infantile...perhaps even whimsical. But the fans themselves?

We replace our cell phone ringtones with fight songs and our screensavers pop with images of stadiums and players. Our wardrobes get limited to certain colors while others are avoided entirely. At the water coolers, trash-talking becomes the new gossip.

We go to the games in person, rarely flinching at high ticket prices. Or we watch it at home with friends. We even flock to sports bars to cheer our teams with total strangers – who become closer than family. We paint our faces. We don our jerseys. And when the temperatures plummet, we strip out of our jerseys and paint our torsos. We perform any number of rituals, which range from seemingly practical to utterly ridiculous. Battle plans are drawn in the form of X’s and O’s and we laud our coaches as gods and generals.

Yes, this is the Church of College Football and its congregation, wherever we meet, is a fiercely loyal group – true defenders of the faith. Should it ever be required, I would bleed scarlet and gray. Someone else might bleed purple and gold while another might even spare a few precious drops of orange and blue. Like Scripture, we recite every statistic, win-loss record, championship count and sacred team history any time and every time we feel compelled to share our gospel. And to ensure that we’re always up-to-date, we receive real-time tweets and texts, 24-7, in case anything crucial happens, as it happens!

Thank goodness we’re not the only sports nuts around. After all, I’m pretty sure it was the Apostle Paul who encouraged King David to run some sort of race in the book of Zechariah, but the exact reference escapes me right now. I’d check my Bible to confirm, but I’m not entirely sure where that’s at either.

A few years ago, this obsessive football fanatic was hit with the stark reality that I knew more about my team and the game in general, than I did about my Heavenly Father or the Playbook He had written for us. Was I willing to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the same voracity? Football, it seems, had become my idol.

So I began to take a long, hard look at what being such a loyal fan had done for me. Okay, it wasn’t such a long look because it had done nothing. But it was a hard one. I could quote statistics all day long but the only Bible verse I knew for sure is found in the book of John, verse 16 of chapter 3. “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Incidentally, that’s also found on the homemade banners hoisted in most end zones.

Ashamed, I knew it was time to hit the bench.

God (who, in some circles associated with, is really believed to be Woody Hayes) made me aware that things were greatly askew in my life. I prayed. I repented and I began to re-prioritize my life. I decided to fake the hand-off by grabbing my Bible instead of the TV remote. I yielded to the Lord as my Head Coach. I made sure that my family was in place as my offensive line. In this way, as quarterback, I could do my job more effectively. Without these elements, I would be alone and rendered ineffective.

Football jargon aside, the change made a profound difference in my life. In fact, I enjoy spending time with my wife and kids so much, there hasn’t been much room for football these last couple of years. Of course, I still get the itch every fall  and I’ll check the AP polls from time-to-time but I just can’t bring myself to waste another Saturday on something that has no eternal impact. Game over.

However, a new season looms on the horizon.

Many times, God gives us a talent or a passion that, until we understand and accept it as such, they become hindrances. Once we do accept them, we need to lay them at Jesus’ feet – in essence, giving them back. Sometimes He’ll keep them because we’ve already squandered the blessing they were meant to become. Other times, He gives them back graciously and full of His power. I’ve been blessed with one such instance.

A new couple has been attending church recently. My wife, who is socially gifted in a way that I am not, quickly became friends with the woman. We get the impression that she’s more willing to reach out than her husband is. He’s quiet and usually doesn’t make friends easily. He follows football, I’m told. But not just football, he follows my team.

So I talked to him Sunday after church and we instantly hit it off. It turns out that he’s not quiet – simply put, nobody had been speaking his language! He made me promise to watch a few games with him this season. I made him promise to join the Bible study group my wife and I are starting next month. 

Later in the afternoon, I reflected on these things. In God’s goodness (and ultimately for His Glory), He’s decided to call me off the bench. It’s fourth and long with only a few seconds remaining and Creation’s great Head Coach (God, not Woody) calls for an end-around flea-flicker combo.

Oh, how I love college football.