Friday, March 8, 2013

Make Nice Please

My reason I have cut so far back on blogging is on the internet - all over the internet. Thank you Steve Mason for substantiating my disgust for sports trash talk. It isn't about the field/court anymore. All things are open and in season. Sports radio is all about bashing in order to increase ratings. The TV is also fair game for the ratings grab. So much drama and not on the competitive playground of the desired sport. Our society is nastier.

The HOF speech of 'His Airness', in which he takes shots at everyone he used getting to the top is one example. Dwight Howard ripping his former team and teammates, and the Twitter war of tweets from Revis and Sherman, Merril Hoge crusade to run Tebow out of the NFL - these are examples that bring us to the ESPN's First Take stupidity between Sherman and Bayless. Click here. to see the word war and then Steve's reporting of it. Go ahead - I won't go on 'til you get back.

Where is Bobby Jones, former Tar Heel, 1972 Olympic Basketball star, former Nuggets and Sixers star? He never engaged in the on-the-court fiasco trash talking. He was not only a great basketball talent, he was notoriously quiet both on and off the court. When an opponent talked him down he simply beat him to the spot, for the rebound or a dunk, which ended the discourse. Now the beaten player talks even more so as not to look 'defeated'. This whole epidemic of creating news instead of reporting it has become an ugly monster.

Personally I used to listen to sports talk radio every moment of the day. Now I listen only to Dan Patrick, SVP & Rusillo, or Mason and Ireland. I just can't watch any of the "shows" other than Sportcenter or an actual game on TV. It just wastes my time to hear 'experts' promoting their own agenda, or forcing the listener/watcher to be filled with such fluff or garbage.

Skip Bayless has become a personality without substance. His inanities are for the explicit purpose of grinding his mills. He is an inconscionable self-promoter. Richard Sherman is an articulate ball player. He is also a self-promoter of the first round! Please bring back real sports reporting. Leave the whip-and-chair TV antics to politicos and the like.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

When You Say Nothing At All

Those times when I am too overwhelmed to speak - "Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice" Proverbs 13.10 (NIV) - it is at those specific and exact moments I know God knows my heart. It wasn't always this way. And to be brutally honest, there are times in my present day life when I doubt, when I give in to the deceiver and proclaim myself the loser. However, in this chaos of over thinking, self-doubt and faithlessness, I find God in the scriptures, and in my spirit.

For years I have been assaulting myself over things I should have done in the past, and not living in "the now" of today - claiming victory through Jesus over my weakness because I know that Paul told us "But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me" II Corinthians 12.9 (NIV).  Growth is a painful process. How do babies get teeth, or children grow, or woman deliver babies? Painfully. Why then, do so many expect spiritual growth to be a magical transformation, like Tinkerbell shakes her wand and Wendy flies?

God gave me my gifts and abilities. I took far too long to discover the few I have because I allowed the deceiver to fool me, confuse me, and betray me into believing I had none, or what I had was unworthy of God's acknowledgment. Like a kid with a thumb sucking habit, just saying stop doesn't turn me into a spiritual giant overnight. My head recognizes that God gives everyone gifts, in their own measure, and that one of mine - for example - is a servant's heart. Satan has turned that one on me to be a doormat. So in the attempt to shed this self-perception, I don't always see myself slip back into the old, like the toddler who finds his thumb in his mouth and thinks, "how'd that happen?"

If you need prayer, let me know and I will joyfully pray for you - this is a terrible time in our world - we all need help, and that which I can supply is to lift you up before God and ask on your behalf  for God to help you, or bless you, to know you are thankful. Thank you my friends who pray for me.