Which end of the spectrum?

This past week I was reading and praying and two pictures came to mind. The first was of a person in a fetal position...fearful, fists clenched tightly, holding on to what's "mine"...The other picture was that of someone laying down, arms stretched out to the side, palms open...All of a sudden that picture caused me to think of Christ on the cross...and then I connected Christ's call to lay down our lives, take up our cross, die to ourselves, surrender everything...all...If those two pictures are at either end of a continuum. And we're all somewhere on that continuum. I know which end I want to be at...but I also know how I'm drawn or I can bend toward the fetal position, especially when times are tough. Survival, self-preservation - those are both strong impulses...but, there is a better way...the way of Jesus...who calls us to lose our lives in order to find our lives...do I really believe that to be the way to the life I want???

18-2 or the bottom of the ninth?

Working out at the gym with a friend early this past week, he was telling me about the baseball team he coaches. Over the previous weekend, they had played a doubleheader. In both games they were leading after seven innings only to end up losing both. Since they played the same team the following day in another doubleheader (they won both of those), they had a team meeting after the two losses. He talked to them about digging deep, finding out what they were made of. As he shared this with me, he added that in the last innings of those first two games,everything mattered...every pitch, every play in the field, every coaching decision. He explained how much more fun it is to be in those games than when you're in a blow-out, winning 18-2...As I listened, I thought about a book I read recently, Wide Awake, by Erwin McManus. In it, McManus talks about how we go through life one of two ways: we either sleepwalk through life or we live life wide awake, fully engaged, experiencing the moment and grabbing all life offers. Thinking about this "global economic crisis" makes me think we did a lot of sleepwalking in America the last 25 years. We now have a chance to live life wide awake. Times of crisis, tragedy and uncertainty can awaken us to what really matters and the true priorities of life. The Great Depression caused people to live wide awake. And because of that, we now look back on a Great Generation - those that lived through the Great Depression, whose lives produced character, self-discipline and a long-term perspective. What if what we're now experiencing produces the Next Great Generation - kids and grandkids whose lives reflect character, self-discpline and a long-term perspective? Paul Young in his bestseller, The Shack, says that if anything matters, everything matters... Put me in coach - that's the game I want to play in!