The Caffeinated Christian

We have a guy in our church who is a great baseball player. I was a pretty good baseball player until I saw a kid get plunked in the eye by a pitch. Not cool. After I saw what a baseball does to an eye, I decided there was not a batter’s box big enough in the Dizzy Dean world that could hold me. I began to push the batter’s box envelope. Actually, the umpire told me that my feet had to be somewhere inside the batter’s box; simply touching the batter's box was not sufficient. I didn’t want to lose an eye, so I stood as far away from the plate as I possibly could. My coach kept telling me that if I didn’t stop stepping out when the ball was pitched that he was going to put concrete in my shoes. So as soon as the season ended I retired from baseball, saving my eye and a perfectly good pair of shoes. I don’t think Kurt is scared of getting hit in the eye, which helped him land a scholarship to the University of Georgia. This year he was a red shirt. Taking a red shirt is not easy for

The ego will drive you further and further into self. Once it grabs onto religion the ego converts spirituality into sensuality and tells you as long as you enjoy it, as long as it holds your interest, as long as it is positive, it must be God working and moving in your life. As long as you agree with it, something spiritual must be happening.

There was a time I could have slid into barbed wire and not been hurt this bad. If the barbed wire happened to damage my youthful skin, the wound seemed to heal within the hour. At least that’s how I remember it. One time I ran a kid’s mini-bike into a briar patch. I also ran a mini-bike into the side of a house, but that’s a story for another day. I cried until 2:30, but I was healed by 4. I was like a lizard. You know a lizard can have a leg amputated and it is no big deal because he will just grow another leg. At least I think that’s true. If not, I am sure that a tail is no big loss to a lizard. You catch a lizard and he will just give you his tail. You’re left holding a twitching tail and he just scurries off with a nub. By the next morning, he just grows another tail. When I was a kid, as I remember it, I healed like a lizard. Now I’m thirty-three and a few days ago I slid into third base during a softball game. It cost me ninety bucks. If I didn’t have insurance, sliding into t

As long as you don’t get caught, you’re still holy.

“If I can’t see God, how can I believe in Him?” I could tell we were progressing past the usual questions of curiosity that we had grown accustomed to for the last six years. You know, the questions designed to make parents squirm. When my wife was pregnant with our second child, I know God laughed. “Daddy, why is my sister in mommy’s belly?” And before I could clear my throat, “Daddy, was I in mommy’s belly?” “How did I get in mommy’s belly?” “Well, um, honey. . .it just. . .you see. . .when a mommy and a daddy. . .” and now that God is laughing, by His grace, in the infinite expanse of time and design, by His predestined purpose, before the worlds were framed, He placed a Chic-Fil-A, with a playground, and ice cream in your path. There you make a hard left, “let’s play on the playground.” And the child screams with glee. The secrets of biology are safe, preferably until she’s thirty. But this question scared me, not so much due to the question, but because she’s only seven, and s