Category Archives: Life

Checking One’s Stride

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I was listening to the radio a few weeks back as I drove home from hockey. 

The guy speaking was a physiotherapist, who works with some of the top athletes in North America.  Among his clients were several NFL stars, a past world record holder for the bench press (700+ pounds at that time), and Donovan Bailey.  Beyond being the therapist who worked with these athletes’ muscles, enabling them to push themselves to the limits, the speaker also served as something of an analyst.

He spoke at length of his work with Donovan Bailey.  They’d video Bailey running, and then they’d spend hours breaking it down frame by frame.  In the quest to absolutely maximize his performance, they’d look at every little piece of his stride: How’s the movement in his ankles? Knees?  Hips?  How’s the flow of his arm movements?  Angle of his back?  On and on and on…

Anything that wasn’t contributing to forward motion had to be changed.  If it was stealing any bit of thrust from the sprinting, it had to go.  That’s some intense scrutiny in the name of reaching full potential.

And I like it.

It got me to wondering what it would be like to “watch film” with Jesus himself.  What if we sat down to analyze my “stride”? 

What would he say about the way I process the world around me? 

What would he notice about the way I interact with others? 

What comment might he make regarding the impulses that pass through my mind and heart in a given day? 

What might he point out in the ways I respond to both positive and negative sensations?

What insights into the way I operate would he draw my attention to for the first time, all in the quest to better me?

As another year ends, I give thanks for the growth I’ve experienced and for the fact that I’m a better man now than I was 12 months ago.  That said, I can definitely see how much I’d learn in a film session with the Master.

Certainly Not Extinct

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Just for the record…

As of today, December 23, 2006, the current NBA season is 1/3 finished.  If the playoffs started today, the Toronto Raptors would be division champions and the #4 seed in the Eastern Conference with a record of 12-15.

Not bad for a rebuilding year with an injured star.

Keep fighting, Dinosaurs!

Merry Christmas: Ready to Rage?!

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Recent article from the bulletin at church…

You know those words that hit hard and cut deep? The kind that you sense the world needs more of?

Kaj Munk spoke such words.

Born in Denmark in 1898, he went on to become a playwright and pastor. During World War II, his intense and outright criticisms of the Nazi movement led to his arrest and execution. Sometime prior to his death, he spoke these words:

“What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer: “Faith, hope, and love”? That sounds beautiful. But I would say—courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth.

Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature… we lack a holy rage—the recklessness that comes from the knowledge of God and humanity.

The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth… a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth, and the destruction of God’s world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat to death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God.

And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Dove, and the Fish… but never the chameleon.”

Christmas season is a time of merriment, joy, peace, and more. Somehow the word “rage” hardly seems appropriate. Yet the coming of Christ signifies an act of God driven by dissatisfaction with a current state of affairs. His children dead in their sins, destroying themselves and each other—something needed to be done.

And so the greatest “invasion” of all time was set into motion, one in which we are redeemed and then recruited.

Ready?

New Man in Town

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Head coach Kent Austin…

Time for a new era in Riderville!

If Austin can lead us to another Grey Cup now in the role of coach, I suspect the province will give him a gold-plated grain elevator, a highway named after him, his image etched into a canola crop, a guest appearance on Corner Gas, and status as the official saint of Saskatchewan.

Come on Kent–go for the gold!

Who We Are… for Real

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In describing the way that “some people” live, a guy named Erich Fromm said this…

Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automaton, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain. Two statements may be said concering this individual. One is that he suffers from defects of spontaneity and individuality which may seem to be incurable. At the same time it may be said of him that he does not differ essentially from the millions of the rest of us who walk upon this earth.

In the quest for a life that’s real and that makes real sense, thoughts about living out of who we really are (as opposed to who we should be or wish to be) just seem to strike a chord with me.

Sincere, genuine, simple, pure,… those are great words. I imagine those are great ways to live too.

As Matt Redman sings: “Now to live the life”.