Tight End Legacy

 

College football has been more fun than ever this year with so many unexpected results.  The 12-team playoff is giving a lot of teams a reason to hope for an extended season and a chance at the national  championship.  UGA has had mixed results like most of the rest of the top teams.  They have talent and depth at all positions, and when they hit on all cylinders, they seem invincible.  Tight end, Lawson Luckie, is making a huge contribution.  Luckie has some big shoes to fill following Brock Bowers, arguably one of the best tight ends ever to play college football.   UGA has had some great tight ends recently, but we have to go back about 20 years to land on Ben Watson.  After a successful NFL career, Ben is back in the spotlight as an analyst for SEC network.   But I have been watching Ben on social media for a while.  He doesn't post that much about his performance on the field, but he posts regularly about what it means to him to be a follower of Jesus.  Ben was recognized in 2018 for his strong character when he received the Bart Starr award.  He used the 8 minutes he had with the microphone to talk about what Jesus has meant to him throughout his life.  With so much of the celebrity world pushing a "look at me" world view, I love seeing Ben display his "look at Him" way of life.

Encounters That Count

Our ConnectGroup from church had its last meeting of the season last week.  Meeting with this group is one of the most important parts of my life, and I miss the time in between seasons.  We had completed Tim Keller's book, Encounters with Jesus, so last night, members brought their favorite bible verses and worship songs to share with the group.  As I was going through songs in preparation, I landed on three to choose from, and selected "It is well" performed by Kristene DiMarco at Bethel.   I was delighted that other members chose the other two on my short list.  One of those songs, I first heard at a church plant Caroline and I were involved with about 20 years ago.  It affected me then and still does today.  The song is "How he loves" and David Crowder was one of the first ones to make the song popular.  I found this cover by a husband/wife worship team at Encounters Church in Texas.  It's interesting that the church name and the title of the book we were studying both include "encounters".  I hope you have an encounter with Jesus today.

Divine Election

The presidential election has dominated air time on televisions, computers, and phones for the past several months.  Now that the election is over, I was curious to see how the conversation might change, and more importantly, what the best Christian response would be.  Regrettably, I had a hard time finding something I could agree with - until I landed on this video from Allen Parr. I didn't know Allen before today, but I liked what he had to say. I especially liked that the 13 minute video was loaded with bible passages supporting his thoughts.  He had three main points. 1) Monitor your communications. Don't communicate messages that will be divisive.  Half of the people in the country will be disappointed in the outcome of the election.  Those people, and all people, are children of God. 2) Put your ultimate faith in God.  No human leader will be perfect and will surely disappoint us at some point.  God is our King and the only one that we can trust in completely. 3)  Keep an eternal perspective.  What happens over the next four years, or the next forty years, will seem trivial when compared with the glory of spending eternity with Jesus.  I encourage you to take 13 minutes to listen, and I would be interested in knowing what you think.