Who would you die for?
Would you die for a good friend? A spouse? A child? I hope that the answer is yes, particularly when it comes to dying for a spouse or your own child. Why would we die for these people? Plain and simple–we love them so much that we would do anything for them, including “taking a bullet” for them, in order to protect them. I would die for my wife. I would die for my own children. I love them that much.
>Now, what if someone came up to you and beat you up? What if this person clobbered you with a baseball bat, kicked you, spit on you, and slashed you with a knife? Would you die for a person who broke your ribs, cracked your skull, and left you in a pool of blood? [...]
Growing up, my Mom was a huge Kenny Rogers fan. Practically every day she listened to her Kenny Rogers cassette tapes in the car as she took me and my brothers to school. It drove us absolutely nuts. My brothers and I would rather listen to Metallica or Whitesnake than Kenny Rogers. There is one song of Rogers’ that was my Mom’s favorite, and that was “The Gambler”. She would play it over and over again and sing along with it, embarrassing us all the way to school. [...]
We are constantly moving. From the moment we wake up in the morning we don’t stop moving from one thing to the next. From going to work, to business meetings, to lunch meetings, back to work, to soccer games, volleyball games, dance recitals, and every other obligation we have with our work and families, we are constantly on the move. We move from one activity to the next to the next all day long until we finally crash into bed at the end of the night. And then we get back up in the morning and do it all over again. [...]
I was a runner in my youth. I ran track for the Boys and Girls Club all throughout grade school and for my high school. During track season we practiced five days a week. Practice started in early spring when it was still cold in St. Louis and the season ran into early summer when it was hot and humid. I hated running. I hated the cold. I hated the heat and humidity. I hated going to practice every day. I never listened to my coaches who told me I needed to run outside of practice and during the off season. The only reason I kept up with it for 12 years was for the track meets. I loved the competition of the meets. That alone kept me coming back year after year. [...]
“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” John 16:12
With it being New Year’s Eve, my first thought was that my “A Father’s Faith” post should be on New Year’s resolutions. So, I went to my own blog and looked at what I wrote
[...]What an amazing thing is must have been to be a shepherd that had an angel of the Lord announce the birth of Christ to you. And then to visit the manger where Our Lord was born and to meet Him, face to face, just hours after his birth. I can’t imagine what those shepherds had been feeling. If they knew the scripture, they saw this as the fulfillment of all that had been foretold. If they didn’t know the scripture, it was probably still an amazing thing to experience–to see and know God face to face.[...]
Do you know God? Fr. Larry Richards’ book, “Be A Man!” poses this question in the first chapter of the book. I just started reading his book, and am only in chapter 2, but that question made me stop and think. My first reaction, was, “Of course I know God!” Then Fr. Richards goes on to say,
