The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Happy Birthday, Carley

September 10, 2012 / / 0 Comments

You’re my youngest daughter and you turn thirteen today. Our baby is a teenager. And while you’re tall and beautiful, smart and funny, using makeup now and wearing Beatles T-shirts, I still see you most of the time as my tiny little bear. You know that’s true. Are you really thirteen? Is that even possible?

I love everything about you, Carley. I love everything about what you have become over the past thirteen years and what you are becoming right before our eyes. I love it that you love Raiders of the Lost Ark and It’s a Wonderful Life. I love that you love Aerosmith and hate Justin Bieber. You think it’s cool to have an electric guitar in your room and a circle whale on your bed. I love that. You appreciate good humor. Nothing gets by you or goes over your head. I love your sarcasm and your puns and that funny little thing you do with your eyes and your mouth to note a moment of irony. It reminds me so much of your Uncle Keith. You look just like him when you do that. I love how you finish my sentences while I’m preaching. And I love how you refuse to go to bed until I’ve properly scratched your back during the “night-night hug.”

I love that you’re the life of the party with your silly friends. I love that you’re the organizer, the planner, the instigator. I love that you love being with them so much of the time. You’re a great friend, Carley. You worry about your friends and you’re sensitive to their feelings. You’re caring and giving. I love that.

I love that you’re so smart and supremely talented. Your drawings never cease to take my breath away. Like yesterday when I watched you sketching out those models so you could encourage your mom in her fashion design class. It blows me away how effortlessly you do the coolest things.

I love that you’re always in the mood to chase and be chased around the house, that you are always a threat to jump on my back from anywhere on our property, and that your punch packs a pretty good wallop. What I used to call your “tiny fists of fury” are now formidable weapons to be feared. I love the way that keeps me on my toes.

I love listening to you pray, Carley. I love the way you talk to our God. So conversational. So matter of fact. So grateful and reverent. So focused on him and on others, not yourself. I learn about your heart by listening to you pray at night. And I love what that reveals to me about what God’s Holy Spirit is doing with you. You are a child of God. You belong to him. And he’s using you in wonderful ways to reflect his glory and reveal himself to others. I love that.

Honestly, there’s a part of me that doesn’t like seeing you grow up. You’re my last one. I look at pictures of you from ten and eleven years ago — even five and six years ago! — and I miss that little tiny bear. I sometimes wish you were still waddling around with that nasty polka dotted blanket, shrieking to get your way, refusing to be left alone, delighting in Veggie Tales, and endangering life and limb with all that climbing. But the bigger part of me thrills in watching you become this beautiful woman of God. I’m beside myself with anticipation over what our Lord is going to do with you, how he’s going to use you to bless his people and advance his Kingdom. He’s given you so many wonderful abilities and gifts. He’s blessed you, Carley. And he’s doing something really special and eternal, something huge and everlasting in you. I love that.

Happy Birthday, Bear. I love you.

Dad

Not The Same

September 7, 2012 / / 0 Comments

A cold front has blown in today. The winds are raging at 40+ miles per hour, the temperatures are falling well into the 70s, and it feels like the end of summer. We can hear the Amarillo High School band practice in the mornings from the parking lot two blocks east of our house. We’ll be packing sweatshirts when we pile into the van late this afternoon for what has become in a short amount of time a Friday night tradition for us here of tailgating and Sandies football. And tonight’s game is the one we all look forward to. This is the big one: Amarillo High versus Tascosa. Tonight marks the 55th consecutive year of this showcase matchup between cross-town rivals. A few houses and cars around the city have been egged this week, which is typical of Hell Week (that’s “Spirit Week” for the more politically correct among us). And with Carrie-Anne teaching now at Tascosa, we’ve had our own back and forth trash-talking inside our house divided.

But it’s just not the same.

The Sandies and the Rebels, for the first time ever — EVER! — are not in the same district. Tonight’s game is a non-district (gasp!) contest. And it’s just not the same.

There’s civic pride and bragging rights and all that. But there’s no district standings to be impacted by the outcome of the game. No playoff positioning at stake. Plus, it’s still September, for crying out loud. These two teams traditionally tee it up late in the year in, more often than not, a do-or-die situation. Golden football trophies are supposed to be on the line in this one. The fourteen to fifteen thousand fans packed into Bivins Stadium should be holding their breath on every snap. But it’s not that way anymore. It’s not nearly as important.

It’s also kinda weird in that Palo Duro destroyed the Rebels in last week’s opener while Amarillo poured it on in Odessa. It’s felt like all week that Tascosa doesn’t have a chance tonight.

Oh, I’m looking forward to it. We’re going to have a blast. It’s still a cross-town rivalry, the whole town will still show up, the food and fellowship in the parking lot will be wonderful, and it’ll be high school football under the Friday night lights on a crisp fall evening. It’ll be fabulous.

But it won’t be the same.

Blow, Sand, Blow!

Allan

Finding Rest in God’s Will

September 6, 2012 / / 0 Comments

In order to deflect attention away from my Cowboys-Giants prediction, I’m going straight to the Rangers this morning. Following last night’s win over the Royals, Texas is a season-high 26-games over .500, they have a five game lead over the A’s in the West and a 7-1/2 game cushion over the Halos. The Rangers are four games up on the Yankees for home field advantage throughout the AL playoffs. And if they win again in KC tonight, that’ll be six straight series the Rangers have won since that mid-August trip to New York. I know what the Rangers’ magic number is today; I’ve been watching it for the past couple of weeks. But I’m not going to post it here and start that countdown until it gets below 20. I don’t want to jinx anything. We’re close. But not yet.

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We serve a God great enough and powerful enough to question and doubt when we suffer bad things. He is big enough and sovereign enough to even get mad at when we see and experience all the violence and war, crime and disease, poverty and suffering in this world. If he’s to blame for not stopping all the evil and suffering — or, better said, if he’s responsible for not stopping it — then, yes, he is all powerful and all sovereign. Therefore, it is also true that this same God must be great enough and powerful enough, big enough and sovereign enough, to have reasons for allowing all the evil and suffering that we can’t understand.

We can’t have it both ways.

Timothy Keller quotes Elizabeth Elliot in his book King’s Cross: “God is God, and since he is God, he is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere else but in his will, and that will is necessarily infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.”

I’ve heard it said before, God is God and I’m not. Oh, yeah. And the absolutely only safe place to be is in his eternal will. Now, his will is way beyond our human understanding. We don’t have a clue as to all the details, much less the big picture of what our sovereign God is doing in the everlasting scope of salvation.

But he is sovereign. He is faithful. And he is good.

And we can find rest in that. In the middle of the war and poverty, the sickness and death, the injustice and despair, we can find rest in his holy will.

Peace,

Allan

A Giant Predicament

September 5, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Before we actually start talking about tonight’s season opener between the Cowboys and Giants, let’s reset things — just to be clear as to where the Cowboys really are and to be entirely honest in our assessments and expectations.

First, tonight’s game is between the defending Super Bowl champions and a mediocre also-ran on the champions’ home field. Since 1997 (that was a LONG time ago), the Cowboys are 120-120. During those 15 years, Dallas has ten or more wins only four times, never in back to back seasons. Over the past four years, the Giants have owned the Cowboys, taking seven of nine contests. Plus, since 2004, the Super Bowl winners have always opened the following season at home on the first night. The defending champs are 8-0 in those games. Undefeated. There’s not one thing anybody can find in recent history that would suggest the Cowboys have even a sniff of a chance tonight.

But what about DeMarco Murray? Yes, he’s healthy. Maybe he’ll be healthy for the whole season. Murray raised a bunch of eyebrows last year with his punishing style and aggressive running. He has a nose for contact and a hunger for the first down marker. He runs angry. And it’s really fun and breathtakingly exciting to watch. But… haven’t we seen this movie before? Yes, we have. It was called “Marion Barber.” If I have the plot correct, the Cowboys will feature Murray on every offensive series this season. He’ll rack up a thousand yards and double-digit TDs, and then rapidly wear down because of the physical nature of his running style. Murray signs with the Bears in 2014. Besides, who’s blocking for Murray? Phil Costa is the only starting Dallas offensive lineman returning to the same position he held last year. We’re talking about Phil Costa; not Rayfield Wright. And I’m comparing it to last year’s O-Line; not 1993’s.

What about Claiborne and Carr? Yes, the Cowboys probably boast now the best starting tandem of cornerbacks in the division. Morris Claiborne and Brandon Carr are serious upgrades over Newman and the pitiful fill-ins they were rotating on the other side. But Jay Ratliff will miss tonight’s game up front. That means the Giants can triple-and-quadruple-team DeMarcus Ware. And they will. Nobody else in the Dallas front seven has ever proven they can get to Manning. Ever. Eli still eats up that secondary.

What about Rob Ryan’s defense? Yes, the Dallas defense should be a little better in this, Ryan’s second year as Cowboys defensive coordinator. But what does that really mean? Seriously, Ryan’s never been a very good defensive coordinator. Never. In his eight seasons as an NFL defensive coordinator, his units have ranked in the bottom six of the league in total defense four times! And Rob Ryan has never coached a defense in the playoffs. Never. Not once. He’s had no success anywhere as a defensive coordinator in the NFL. His hiring in Dallas was a classic Jerry Wayne publicity stunt meant to attract attention. It certainly has done that. And it’s been an embarassment to the franchise.

Don’t forget, too, that Jason Witten probably won’t play tonight. He wasn’t on the team plane when they flew from DFW to NY yesterday afternoon. He’s with the team now; he got there sometime late this morning. But even if he signs a stack of waivers and reams of medical release forms and insurance disclaimers, I don’t think the Cowboys will let him play tonight. Along with Ratliff’s absence, Witten’s injury gives them another convenient excuse to use when they lose.

Romo has two turnovers. Eli throws for two TDs. The Giants win by two scores.

Peace,

Allan

THE Faith

September 4, 2012 / / 1 Comment

As the father of three teenage daughters (OK, technically Carley turns 13 next week), I have a lot to fear. I fear the boys. I fear the proms and the weddings. I fear the drama. I fear the things I don’t understand and can never relate to. And, did I mention, I fear the boys. But I also have another fear. I fear that one day one of my daughters may tell me she’s not interested in my religion.

My religion.

I’m human. Oh, my word, yes, I’m human. And as a father, my potential for failure is great. In my efforts to protect them and shape them and provide for them everything they’re going to need to fully function in this world and, at the same time, deny them the things they want that would ambush that process, I’m scared to death of being too strict. And in my sincere struggles to be open and accessible and relational, I’m scared to death I won’t have the courage or integrity to give them the proper structure and rigid discipline they need. My fear is that some day one or more of my daughters, damaged maybe by my failures as a dad, might see some connection between those failures and my religion. It would be easy to do. I’m afraid they could use that as an excuse to leave the Church. I’m not crazy, right? You’ve thought similar things before, yes?

So, I’m determined to teach my girls that my religion is not my religion; my faith is not my faith. It’s much, much bigger than that. I received it from my parents who, in turn, received it from their parents. The Christian faith in our family is deep and old. It belongs to me because I inherited it from them and didn’t throw it away. I’ve held it in trust for my kids. I’m passing it on.

I tell my daughters that rejecting the faith is not simply a matter of throwing away the tastes of their parents; it’s not just chunking my idiosyncrasies or abandoning my methods of control. Christianity is a long held belief about the nature of true reality. Our faith is a way of looking at life and living in this world. It’s been attested to by millions of very different people over many different centuries in a great variety of many different circumstances in countless different ways. It’s not just mine. The faith is universal and eternal. It’s everything.

Yes, my kids will be free to accept or reject the faith. But I’m doing everything I can to make sure they understand that what they choose to accept or reject is not simply their parents’ religion. It’s an old, old faith. One faith. Just one. The significance of the differences among the Christian denominations is made totally insignificant by the great march of time. This one great thing to be accepted or rejected is not my religion, not my family’s religion, not the U.S.A.’s religion. It is the Christian faith. It’s been passed down for over two thousand years. Each denomination has passed it down and transmitted what all Christians everywhere for all time have confessed. It’s one eternal faith.

Any faith that is Christian certainly has the proper pedigree. If it claims Jesus as the Son of God and the only way to the Father; if it claims salvation through the death, burial and resurrection of the Christ incarnate; if it claims Jesus as the exclusive Savior of the World, it goes directly back to the original apostles who saw and heard everything and to whom it was all revealed by the Holy Spirit.

We can’t say the words “my faith” apart from owning a faith that came from others. We all know that. But I’m not sure we teach it enough. This is not a private thing, or even a familial thing. It’s much more than family or denomination or nation or century or era. It is mere Christianity. It’s ancient and universal. And it’s weightier and more worthy than all the faulty expressions we’ve experienced in our churches or in our parents.

Now, I’m still scared. And I’m still very, very aware of my great potential for failure as a dad. But my kids are all going to know that Christianity is not my faith, nor my religion. It belongs to eternity.

Peace,

Allan

Our God Forgives

August 30, 2012 / / 3 Comments

Our God gives forgiveness. He gives forgiveness freely and generously and abundantly. He gives it in spades. He’s not bashful about his forgiveness. He’s not conservative about it in any way. It’s over-the-top forgiveness with our God. And we can’t preach it enough.

Our people need to understand deeply that they have been forgiven by their Father. Our churches need to know and comprehend that our God gives and gives and gives. He gives life and breath; he gives you your brown eyes; he gives you your love of ice-cream and the delight you get from songs by Journey. He’s given all of that to you.

And he’s looked carefully at your great debt. He’s studied it in detail. And he’s taken your debt and wiped it completely away. He’s obliterated it. It’s gone.

“You have put all my sins behind your back!” ~Isaiah 38:17

“You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea!” ~Micah 7:19

“‘I will forgive their wickedness,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will remember their sins no more!'” ~Jeremiah 31:34

“I am he who blots out your transgressions!” ~Isaiah 43:25

“I have swept away your offense like a cloud!” ~Isaiah 44:22

Over and over and over again. He forgives and forgives and forgives. Old Testament and New Testament. The Law and the Apostles. The Prophets and the Epistles. The sins of the Israelites and the sins of the Church. Your sins and mine. God forgives! Our sins are out of sight, out of reach, out of mind, out of existence! Our Father has stopped keeping score on us! The ledger is clean! It’s a blank slate! Hallelujah! Through Christ Jesus our Lord the path is clear to a righteous relationship with our loving Creator. Sin has nothing on us anymore! Praise the God who gives and gives and gives!

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Congratulations to Central’s own Collin Bowen who made the cover of the Amarillo Globe-News Pigskin Preview that came out today! Collin is the three-year starting quarterback for the explosive Randall Raiders who open up their season tomorrow night against Plainview. And he represents our Lord and his school with integrity and selfless sacrifice for others both on and off the field. Collin and the Raiders have plenty of time before they tangle with Central’s Blake Borger and the Amarillo Sandies in what should be the game that decides the District 3-4A title on October 25. While we look forward to that, we’ve got plenty to keep us occupied. The Sandies and Rebels renew their rivalry next Friday night; only this time it’ll be the first non-district game ever between the two schools. With Carrie-Anne teaching now at Tascosa, we are certainly a house divided. Panhandle’s Panthers play the first regular season game in the state here in about 30-minutes at Bivins, followed by the Rebels’ opener against Palo Duro’s Dons.

You Central members, please ask Collin to autograph your copy of the Pigskin Preview before or after church Sunday, not during.

Peace,

Allan

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