January 12, 2011

I am not sure about you, but I thought this weekend’s service was really good.  The worship through music was great, the message was a challenge to me personally (hopefully to you too), and it was great to be able to let you all know about our upcoming move to V Sue Cleveland High School the end of February.  Also, I am not sure if you noticed, but we had the largest attendance in Paragon’s short history… 162.  That is exciting.

The only thing I felt bad about as I walked away from our gathering was the fact I didn’t mention anything about the shootings that took place the day before in Tucson, AZ.  It wasn’t that I forgot it’s that I honestly didn’t know what to say.

Now, 3 + days have passed and there has been plenty of news coverage and almost too much said about the whole incident. I do, however, want to add my two cents to the conversation after the message from Sunday.

On Sunday night, Christy and I were watching Dateline NBC to find out more about what had happened.  The news crew was bouncing from doctors to friends to political aides to whoever else had some insight to what had happened and how it all unfolded.  The one part of the show that had really caught my attention was when they did a piece on the 9 year old girl who was killed during this tragic event.  They had her parents on for an interview to talk about her.  I was blown away at how calm they were and how they were sitting there answering the questions in such a composed manner.  

As the interview progressed, I learned that her dad was a baseball scout for the LA Dodgers and her grandfather was a former manager for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980, when they won the World Series title.  To me, and maybe it’s just because I am a sports guy, those are pretty big accomplishments.

And then, because of the way my mind works, I started to think, what if that were me… what if I were sitting there doing and interview… would I be calm or would I be a mess? (most definitely the latter)  and then my mind went to… what if I had a big Scouting job with a Major League Baseball team and my dad was a World Series winning manager… would any of that really matter if I had just lost my nine year old?  The answer to that is NO… I would give up anything and everything on this earth to have my kid back… I would give anything to even just one more day with my kid.

THEN… the question became… then why do I put so many other things (small insignificant things) in front of each of them now?  Just a little more work… just a little more TV…a little more alone time…  why don’t you guys go outside and play and just leave me alone for a little while… etc.

That old saying is so often true… “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.”  Why do we wait until they are gone to realize this?  Why do we put the meaningless things in life in front of the things that mean everything?

If you want to go back to Sunday’s message… why do we spend so much time worshipping our false gods (money, sex, stuff, sports teams, etc.) that give us nothing in return when instead we should be putting our focus on the one true God that has given us everything we could ever need?

Just my two cents...