Winter Sports

I'm not much for extreme golfing.

Let me clarify. By that I mean I don't like golfing when it's really hot. It seems to take the luster from the game if I'm sweating like crazy under a burning sun, especially while I'm trying to maintain my composure after a muffed third shot from the rough.

It's the last week of July. Normally, this time of year we're hitting at or near the 100-degree mark here in St. Louis, slogging under a heavy blanket of humidity, courtesy of the Gulf of Mexico. In these times, if I have to be outdoors at all, I'd prefer to be boating in the middle of a lake or relaxing among some shady trees. Of course, what self-respecting golfer wants to find himself in either the water or the woods?

But, thankfully, this has not been a typical St. Louis summer. This whole week we're enjoying high temperatures in the eighties with low humidity. As a result, this is one of those rare summer seasons when it makes sense to me to go golfing. I only wish I would have known this a few months back when we were planning our family vacation.

For once, wouldn't it be great to schedule a golfing tournament when you know the weather is going to be great? Actually, I can, and you can too. In seven short months the Men's NetWork is hosting a golf tournament at the Mission Inn Resort & Club in Howey-In-the-Hills, Florida (37 miles northwest of Orlando). It covers four days and three nights on Thursday, February 26 to Sunday, March 1, 2015.

If I catch the early bird discount (up until Oct. 31) it'll cost me $700 to golf solo for the weekend -- or I can bring a buddy and double up on a room for $500 each. After Oct. 31 the cost goes up $100 for each selection. That price includes excellent resort accommodations, hot breakfast buffet and lunch daily, plated dinners on Friday and Saturday, and all carts and green fees for 18 holes of golf on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Play is on two championship 18-hole golf courses, offering unique, natural challenges, which include dramatic 85-foot elevation variances and water everywhere. The Men's NetWork will change up the tournament format daily, and in the evenings we'll enjoy Bible studies and devotions led by the Speaker of The Lutheran Hour, Rev. Gregory Seltz, along with Bruce Wurdeman, former executive director of Lutheran Hour Ministries.

If you're interested in dodging the cold this winter for some warmth and edification in the sun, check it all out at Click here!

Same Planet, Different Day

It seems these days it's easier than ever to get lost in the reverie of yesteryear. I was looking at some Polaroids going back to when I was a kid in the 70s. They were of my uncle. He was standing at the counter of Jim's Finer Foods, a neighborhood delicatessen he owned and operated on Chicago's south side with his mom (my grandmother). Both he and she have since died. Through the front screen door I could see the gas station across the street, and some trees. Both the station and the trees are gone now as well.

Suffice it to say, that Chicago neighborhood has radically changed over the years. Like my relatives and that street-side landscape, the store itself is gone now too, leveled to make way for some two-story apartment buildings that are also showing their age and decay. Forty years is a lot of water over the dam when it comes to the march of civilization. Forty years ago astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were happily skipping on the lunar surface. If you're old enough, you remember the rolling, black and white TV images of them bopping around the lunar module, planting the U.S. flag, and becoming the first two men to set foot on the moon. And 40 years from now? Well, who knows? Affordable deep-sea condominiums? A world free of AIDS? A single language we all know and understand?

Sometimes it seems the forces at work in the world are beyond our control. We watch the news and what we see seems too bizarre to be real: countries swelling with the influx of refugees escaping armed conflict, major storms blasting places like Japan and Myanmar and Indonesia and New Orleans, a commercial airliner shot out of the sky. It's enough to make a guy yearn for the good ole days when people were riled by Woodstock and Watergate and Women's Lib ... and when 50 cents bought you 50 pieces of Bazooka.

Sometimes it's hard to imagine these are the good ole days for today's kids.

I wonder what they will be saying in 40 years.

The Difference a Few Years Makes

I came across a blog by Rev. Bob Deffinbaugh. In it he discusses Adam and Eve's fall in the Garden of Eden from Genesis chapter 3. He wrote,

"There is an important principle to be seen here: God desires from us the obedience of faith. Such obedience is not based upon our understanding of why we are to act as God requires, but simply because it is God who requires it.

"The obedience of faith is based on our faith in God, not on our understanding of why God calls one thing good and another evil. Parents teach their children to obey on the same basis. You cannot explain to a young child why an electrical outlet is dangerous. You can only forbid them to touch it, because you said so, and because they trust your word."

This got me thinking of my attitude toward my dad when I was growing up. As a young child I thought dad could do no wrong. I never would have dreamed of questioning his word or his advice.

But that all changed when I became a teenager. Suddenly, I was so much wiser. I didn't need an old, out-of-touch man with salt-and-pepper hair telling me how to live my life. How could he possibly remember the desires racing through a young man's heart and mind? What could he possibly know about life and love in the 1970s?

Looking at my relationship to my teenage son today I realize how stupid I was back then. Back when I was his age, my dad was younger than I am right now. Yet even now with my more salt than pepper hair, I can vividly remember those same desires my son faces. I can see them, hear them, smell them, taste them, and feel them deep in my gut. They may be wrapped differently today, but they're still the same temptations young guys have faced since Cain and Abel hit their teens. I know how dangerous those innocent-looking little temptations really are -- and so did my dad.

Then I think of our Heavenly Father. I'm still acting like a teenager toward Him. I tell myself I'm so much older and wiser than I was as a teenager. But I'm still dumb enough to think I can play with those temptations God forbids and come out all right. (Was that mom or dad who said, "If you play with fire, you're going to get burned"?) I'll obey Him, but only after He explains to me why I should.

My dad wasn't perfect, and he probably got a few things wrong. But I can't say the same for our Heavenly Father. His knowledge and His love are perfect. He knows the soul, mind, heart and body He created for each of us, and He knows better than anyone what is harmful and what is beneficial for us.

It's not for me to question God, to challenge Him for reasons and explanations. Mine is simply to recognize my small mind and my tiny world of experience and bow down to His all-seeing eye, to His all-knowing mind. Mine is to recognize my ignorance and over-confidence, to repent and fall before Him in shame. Mine is to recognize His fatherly love in His beloved Son Jesus Christ, to receive His open-armed forgiveness and peace. Mine is to humbly, quietly obey His Word with simple, childlike adoration and trust.

Any thoughts on this whole business of fathering and being fathered?

Supreme Court Ruling: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby

Last week Monday, June 30, the United States Supreme Court announced its landmark decision in the case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. In a 5-4 ruling, the high court held that closely held, for-profit corporations cannot be forced to comply with the contraception-coverage mandate in the 2010 health-care reform law. Hobby Lobby and other companies had religious objections to being forced to pay for some or all of the contraceptives for its employees.

Doing a Google search of "Hobby Lobby decision" produced some heated commentary in the results. Here's a sample of what turned up:

"A Supreme Feud over Birth Control: Four Blunt Points"

"Federal Judge Blasts Hobby Lobby Decision"

"No, the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby Decision Is Not Based upon a Scientific Mistake"

"Activists Hand Out Condoms at Hobby Lobby to Protest Supreme Court Decision -- Their Profession Might Surprise You"

"Supreme Court Now Playing Cute PR Games with Hobby Lobby Decision"

The timing of the decision -- the Monday before Independence Day -- brings up once again the question about the "wall of separation" concept that governs many Americans' understanding of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

This topic of the relationship between church and state is explored in the Men's NetWork video Bible study, The Intersection of Church & State. It discusses the historical thinking behind the First Amendment and explores some of the benefits of cooperation between church and state.

Especially relevant to the Hobby Lobby case is this comment from Tad Armstrong, J.D., in the third session of the video. "We're somehow led to believe the Supreme Court is unfriendly to religion and unfriendly to Christianity in particular. And you have to read these wonderful Supreme Court decisions that support religion and support Christianity, and then we need to praise those and stand up for them."

With the Independence Day weekend right behind us, it's a good time to revisit this video Bible study to again contemplate our rights, privileges and responsibilities as American citizens. You can find it here at The Intersection of Church & State.

And the Rockets' Red Glare ....

This Friday the Fourth of July is back, and with it will come parades, barbecues, gatherings and fireworks. I loved the Fourth when I was a kid back in the 60s. We had a couple of great parades (both netted us loads of candy), and a huge, double-propped military helicopter roared in and touched down in the park down the street. It joined a cool lineup of police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances. The Fourth was a big carnival with snow cones, Belgian waffles, and cotton candy. It was a good time.

Of course, the thing we were really all waiting for was the fireworks. After the sun finally set, we'd spend an eternity swatting mosquitoes and watching the sky slowly transform from light blue to a black velvet canvas. Then we'd strain our eyes, scanning the roped-off section of the park trying to be the first to spot that faint, red glow. If you looked really close you could make out our neighbor with the glowing punk, bending down over the table for an instant. He'd then spin around and bolt out of there as fast as he could. One by one the shells blasted off into the sky and burst into brilliant colors -- or my favorite -- the blinding, white flash. Smiles would break over our faces as we searched each other's eyes. "Wait for it!" Suddenly, the shock wave came crashing through your body like a freight train. I couldn't wipe the stupid grin off my face.

A few decades have gone by since then. Now when I watch those flashes of color and feel my body shaking I find my thoughts turn to Uncle Roland. He grew up in Marysville, Ohio, and went off to fight with the U.S. Marines in World War II. He served as a private first class in the 4th Pioneer Battalion, in the 14th Regiment, of the 4th Marine Division. The Pioneers were engineers who operated bulldozers and other heavy equipment to prepare or repair roads, clear mine fields -- basically do whatever it took to assist the movements of our troops or disrupt the movement of our enemies.

His Pioneer Battalion was right in the middle of the fray during Iwo Jima. He wasn't sitting on a blanket on the grass watching fireworks way up in the sky. He was right there in the middle of the firework display, blinded by the intense flashes of light, hearing the whirr of shrapnel flying by, breathing in the stinging sulfur fumes, bombarded by the constant concussion of shells going off all around.

Three days into the invasion, on Wednesday, February 21, Roland's Pioneer Battalion was clearing a minefield, so his Division could go capture the assigned airstrip. Roland was hit. They evacuated him on a DUKW: the same amphibious vehicles I've ridden on duck tours in the Wisconsin Dells and in Washington, D.C.; he took that agonizingly slow and loud ride to a waiting hospital ship where he died several hours later.

I wouldn't be born for another 15 years.

This Fourth I'll sit in the dark, seeing, smelling, hearing and feeling the fireworks. And I'll think of my uncle -- and the countless other American men and women from the very first Fourth of July in 1776 to this day: living, fighting, bleeding and dying so we can live free. It makes the holiday more somber, but so much richer.

What is the most memorable or meaningful part of the Fourth of July celebration for you?