The Caffeinated Christian

On his podcast, leadership guru John Maxwell recently shared  lessons he learned from his dad .  One lesson was to "never give up and never give in." Maxwell often heard his dad say, "I've never met a successful man who quit his way to the top." My dad never let me quit. He would not allow me to blame coaches, teachers, or leaders for my lack of opportunity. If the coach didn't play me, dad told me to get better so that the coach can't keep me on the bench. No excuses. To this day, there has never been something I wanted to quit as bad as baseball. The year I moved from coach pitch to fastpitch was miserable. I was the youngest kid on the team, developmentally behind, and I could not hit the ball. I was obligatory batter #11. Not everyone gets to play, but everyone gets to bat - even Brian. Because I could not get a hit, the coach knew that me getting hit was my only shot at getting on base.  Since then, I've learned that I have astigmatism. My eyes

Peaches are one of my favorite fruits. Every summer, make a pilgrimage to a mountain orchard for one of the world's best BBQ sandwiches and a giant bag of peaches. A few weeks ago, as we paid for our peaches, the lady at the counter warned her not to keep them in the bag because they would quickly rot. Her warning was a reminder of a sad reality of good fruit. It won't last forever. We were in a race against rot. Over the next few days, we ate peaches like Jeff Gordon drove NASCAR. We went through a couple of gallons of vanilla ice cream covered in peaches. Peaches make ice cream more healthy, right? But there was only so much we could do. Inevitably, as the prophetic woman at the orchard predicted, the last few began to spoil. We had to throw them away. Vanilla ice cream lost a great friend. Imagine for a moment, a magical alternative offered by the lady at the orchard. What if we had approached the checkout counter, and heard these words, "That's a lot of peaches. Yo