Gabe Hits Another Dinger

I gotta tell ya, Gabe's faith journey through baseball has been a great learning experience for me too.

After hitting his first home run, Gabe's on field performance began to slip in a BIG way. Since the tourney Gabe had only a few weak hits and, defensively, had committed eight errors in two games! Brutal!

On the drive home following the second bad game in a row he and I had a little talk. I asked him what he thought was his problem? Through gritted teeth he angrily responded "I don't know!"

I asked him, "What's your goal now?"

"What?" he questioned.

I replied, "Well, now that you've hit a home run, something you've been wanting since t-ball, what's your new goal?"

"I... I don't have one" he chimed.

"That's the problem" I said.

So, we talked about how he needed to set new goals. Just because God gave him a gift of a home run doesn't mean He is done with him. You have to seek out the next goal.

With that in mind, we mapped out a few important things to focus on the remaining regular games... no errors, solid hits, better focus, push to be better... all with a single goal in mind, to give Safety Harbor it's first District 12 Championship.

Gabe's next game he played well. Nothing extraordinary, but a solid game. Our team came back to win in extra innings, 9-7.

Last night Gabe finally put it all together. Facing one of the best pitchers in the league, Gabe went 4-4 with a home run, a double and two singles. He hit in three runs and played exceptional defense, helping lead the team to a 9-6 win.

More important than what is happening on the field is what Gabe, and I, am learning off the field. We're learning about God's grace, about His expectations, about how He dreams bigger than we do and how we need to continually re-evaluate what God wants from us next.

This entire journey so far has had me thinking a lot about my goals, my faith and my role in God's plan.

Astronomical Budget

I heard today that there are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way.

Our national budget is over $3.5 trillion.

If you took a star for every dollar the U.S. Budget Galaxy would be almost four times as large as the Milky Way.

That's not soothing.

Life, Liberty and the... I'm sorry, what was the first part?

My daughter and I were discussing our country and the idea of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It's no fluke that Life is the first on the list... the most important, the most fundamental to our existence. Granted, when the country was founded there was some question as to the Liberty part... women could not vote, slavery was common place. But Life... well, that was a given right to all.

Or is it?

Fortunately, over the centuries our country has dealt with the unfulfilled aspects of national Liberty. Women were given the right to vote and work. Minorities were allowed to have equal civil rights and slavery was abolished. These growing pains of our nation were not easy, but necessary.

And, as it turns out, the growth in Liberty appears to have destroyed the first and third parts of the equation for others. When you look at the overall evolution of this country, only one segment of society has lost their three rights.

The unborn.

It seems odd that by rightfully expanded the role of ALL people in our society that it has, in turn, taken away the most first fundamental right to us all, Life, from the most vulnerable within our society.

Must our society be so?

Is that the cost of Life and Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Does that mean I am allowed to dismiss those three rights from others in order to achieve them myself?

If my Life and my Liberty and my Pursuit of Happiness means I kill a child in the womb and destroy their Life, their Liberty and their Pursuit of Happiness... is that okay?

Is that what the founders intended? I'm sure it's not.

It seems that Liberty is a two-edged sword, with the sharp blade held at the throats in the womb of the most innocent and helpless of our society. How did a country that so obviously recognized the evil of slavery embrace what is so obviously a more horrendous evil in abortion?

When did the second part of the equation erase the first and negate the third?

SLP Padres

Here are some pics of the Padres uniform we sponsored at Sonlight Pictures. We picked Padres because it means Priests.

Go Padres!