FF Rant: Back Away Slowly… (Do Not Draft 2014)

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

After the response to last year’s batch of fantasy football posts, I figured I’d give it a spin again this year. Here’s the first in a series coming to the blog over the next few weeks on FF. Argue, agree, or ignore!

There are some guys that have been reliable so long or the hype is so high, you think you have to draft them, but frankly, unless they came cheap in a dynasty league or somehow fall into my lap, I’m not touching them.

In the obvious name department… Marshawn Lynch of the Seattle Seahawks. As I write this, Skittles wants more money. He plays in the NFC West, against the Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, and the St. Louis Rams, three of the preseason top-10 defenses. [Hey, while I’m at it, I’m going to bump down the hype on Andre Ellington, Frank Gore (for several reasons), and Zac Stacy (not just because Tre Mason is there), because they play against each other, too.] Lynch is 28 so you might get another good year or two out of him, but do you really want to deal with him being disgruntled, or losing carries to Christine Michael?

Sticking with the ‘Hawks, I’m in the minority, but I’m down on the often broken, always (head)aching Percy Harvin. But I’ll bet you several rounds (or auction dollars) that someone in your draft will remember his electrifying Super Bowl performance against the hapless Denver Broncos. Segueing to the Broncos, I’m one of the three people I know who won’t be taking their quarterback, Peyton Manning. Yes, he had a record-setting year, but three things stick out to me as reasons to stay away from his high-blown level of probable cost. One, record-setters often show regression the following year (see: Tom Brady); two, remember the aforementioned Super Bowl? Other defenses will have caught up; and three, Emmanuel Sanders and Montee Ball are not the big target that Eric Decker was dancing the sidelines or the blocker/ball carrier that Knowshon Moreno was.

Ben Tate has bitten my teams more than most folks, but his transfer to the Cleveland Cavaliers (oops, that’s LeBron!), the Browns, means that he winds up stuck between Brian Hoyer and Johnny Manziel at quarterback, with a new coach, and an offense missing both Norv Turner and the field-stretching Josh Gordon (suspension pending). I also think that the previously noted Moreno isn’t going to have nearly the success he had with Manning in Denver, as the Dolphins lack the chemistry with Ryan Tannehill, Mike Wallace, and… ? to make the running lanes open up.

Stay tuned for more…

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View From The Shore #3: ‘Unbroken’ On A Rainy Day (A Mustard Seed Musing)

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Some days on vacation, the rain just doesn’t want to allow for time at the beach. That’s why there is always a stack of solid beach reads packed, which this year includes The Giver, Marvel’s Infinity, and Terry Hayes’ I Am Pilgrim. But this year, a truly serious look at what survival and redemption look like snuck into the pile: Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, the real-life story of Olympic athlete and World War II POW, Louis Zamperini. The story, a tale that seems farther fetched than any fictional tale, proved to be even wilder than my favorite wartime movie, To End All Wars, but it too asked me to consider what faith means and where we find it even in the midst of our struggle with tragedy and evil.

So much for a beach read.

Zamperini moves from troubled adolescent to crack military bombardier, leaving a career as an Olympic miler shelved. But as if his ongoing efforts as a risk taking soldier aren’t enough, he survives a plane crash at sea, battles with sharks during a month and a half period lost at sea, and nearly three years of incarceration at prison camps devoid of Geneva Convention standards. Of course, if you’ve seen the trailer for the Angelina Jolie-directed film coming this Christmas, you’ve seen some of this, but it’s still almost impossible to wrap your mind around his story. And yet, in reading the book, I’m challenged by my own expectations about life… and global decisions.

I’m left wrestling with my own life and how I approach tragedy. Do I accept it as “God’s will” or “it is what it is”? Or do I move forward with faith that the problems aren’t ‘of God’ but that God can work through them? Would the story of Zamperini’s faith be cheaper if it happened mid-stream, or ‘in the foxhole’? What difference would it make if he had it earlier, rather than later?

On the global side, I find myself flashing back to Zero Dark Thirty, a movie I appreciated for the tears of Maya Lambert (Jessica Chastain) rather than the ‘hoorah’ of killing Osama Bin Laden. My soul longed for justice for Zamperini in relationship to his captors, but Unbroken pushes us to consider something more. And yet, with ZD30 in mind, I find myself wondering if we (America, the civilized world, United Nations, etc.) wish to believe that we’re ‘the good guys,’ then it’s best if we mark a line and refuse to cross it. Can we say we’re doing that? Can we say that we’re ‘more humane’? Didn’t the Japanese soldiers believe they were actually doing what was right? Isn’t that what many Nazis believed?

Unbroken has shaken up my easygoing week at the beach. But it’s made me realize that even after this week is over, there’s still a real world to go back to, a world that still needs us to reflect on our pasts and refuse to make the same mistakes.

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The Be-Attitudes: Pure Dirt Or Sullied Honor? (Sunday’s Sermon Today)

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.–Matthew 5:8

Did you know there’s an acceptable percentage or amount of insect parts or excrement in the food we eat and drink? That the FDA considers that “pure.” Somehow, that makes me gag a little bit but it makes me think there’s hope for me to be the “pure in heart” that this Be-Attitude talks about in Matthew.

Jesus is used to getting into tussles about what it means to be pure. Looking at Matthew 15:1-11, we see that the Pharisees wanted to come down hard on Jesus, that they thought they’d really caught him this time, that he was really going to be sure of their religious superiority. The Pharisees and teachers of the Law came to Jesus, and wait for this really hardcore condemnation… they said, “your disciples were seen eating without washing their hands!”

Do you ever wonder if Jesus just wanted to roll his eyes sometimes? Or maybe just look up and ask, “are you kidding me?”

But instead, he replies with a set of questions for them. We looked at corban before, a religious understanding about setting aside money for God, and about how the Pharisees had basically allowed people to disown their own relatives and fail to care for their families. We know from our look at “Honor your father and mother” in our Ten Words series, that Jesus doesn’t really agree with their interpretation of God’s word.

Jesus quotes Isaiah 29: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.'” And he turns to everyone else, the Pharisees, the disciples, the random people who’ve come to hear him speak, and he says, “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

Let’s quickly recap:

The Pharisees define purity by the kinds of rules that make us wash our hands before eating or number prayers we should repeat or what songs we must sung or how we dress or interact or tithe.

Jesus shows up and says that what happens to us, and what we eat, and what rules we follow, don’t matter as much as how we love other people, how we speak to them, and what we do with our time.

If purity of heart is about love then it seems like there’s something about love that’s important to Jesus.

-The way we understand God’s love for us.

-The way God shows us love through Jesus.

-The way we show God that we love him.

And one, amazingly complicated and often maddening love: the way we love each other.

We read I Corinthians 13 earlier, and I watched some of you glaze over. A couple of you even fell asleep! But I’d like to read the first ten verses to you now, from The Message translation, and we’ll see if maybe there’s more to this package than just a cute Bible passage for weddings.

See, the thing is, Paul wrote this to the church at Corinth. Not to bless his niece and nephew’s wedding, not to use in some kind of marriage counseling. Paul wrote this to explain to one of his churches how to do church right, how to love one another, how to reflect the pure heart of God. Let’s not forget: the pure in heart will see God.

No pressure, right?

1 Corinthians 13 (The Message)

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

Check out the list of actions in the introduction:

If I am the best speaker in the world…talented and eloquent…

If I can channel the heavenly behavior and spirit of the angels…I am spiritual…

If I can speak God’s Word powerfully, and make everything understandable about God for everyone else…I am a good teacher…

If I have the faith to make a mountain move…I am faithful…

If I am willing to die for my faith by being executed publicly…I believe and mean what I say…

But I don’t have love, then it means nothing.

Those are some wonderful traits, some powerful things, some things we aspire to for ourselves to know that we’re getting close to what God wants us to be. And maybe that’s the point.

There’s no partial credit here. You can’t do the right things or have the right gifts or even believe in your head all of the right ideas about God, and not have love, or it just flat out doesn’t matter.

The Message says that I am bankrupt without love. Bankrupt: giving everything up, financially spent, having no resources, penniless.

All of those things that are heroic, faithful qualities don’t matter at all to the Apostle who took the good news of Jesus Christ and shared it with the world. With. Out. Love. We can’t checklist ourselves onto the ledger here. We have to really love which is intangible, sometimes impractical, and fairly… abstract.

But love it seems, is crucial, live giving, absolutely necessary. It’s like water to our parched bodies, oxygen to our suffocating lungs, blood to keep the oxygen moving around.

Love is the official “gotta have it”– Pepsi, move over.

If we’re going to “get” Jesus, be disciples, understand what it means to be pure in heart, then we need to get figured out how to really love.

Not like “oh my goodness, I love your sweater!”

Or, “He’s so wonderful, I love him!” even though you met thirty minutes ago.

No, love as in the relationship between people, as individuals and groups, that must include God.

But how can we wrap our minds around what real love is? How can we make our hearts so purely burn for God that everything else fades away?

Let’s dive into the mid-verses of I Corinthians 13. I see 10 things that love carries with it as aspects of purely seeking God out and wanting nothing-but-God.

#1 Love never gives up. What do you think of when you think of not giving up? I think of… a picture my dad had hanging on his office door when I was in high school. It was a picture of a stork eating a frog. The whole frog was in the stork’s mouth– except for the hands of the frog, that were wrapped around the stork’s throat.

When I think of not giving up, I think of Jimmy Valvano, and his speech at the inaugural ESPYs. Valvano, the coach of NC State basketball in the 1980s, lost his battle with cancer, but his passion for research and battling cancer has saved thousands of lives.

Of course, when I think of love not giving up, I think of Forrest Gump’s love for Jenny: no matter what Jenny did to Forrest, no matter how many times she betrayed him, he refused to stop loving her.

Love’s refusal to give up is a decision, not a feeling.

#2 Love cares more about other people than itself. There are two people whose pictures pop into my head when I think of selfless love. Well, two people and a dog. Mother Theresa, who devoted her life to caring for the neglected and untouchable in India, lived a life without focus on herself, only on how she could make the lives of these forgotten about people better.

And I think of my Grandma. Sure, she always wanted me to play “Blessed Assurance” on the piano over and over again, but outside of that, I never remember her wanting anything from us. She wanted to make sure we were happy, and well fed. You probably have a grandma like that!

When it comes to unconditional love, I can’t think of any better picture for that than my dog, Annie. You’ve got to love her: she’s forgotten how much trouble she was in and how angry you were with her, before she’s even made it out of the room. Good day, bad day, in between, she’s the picture of love, especially when I don’t deserve it.

#3 Love doesn’t worry about what it doesn’t have. See Ten Commandment #10. “Thou shall not covet.” We’ve covered this before, right?

#4 Love doesn’t strut, believe it’s always right,  think it’s all that and a bag of chips. Okay, so I added in there about the bag of chips. But have you ever met someone who really, really loved someone else and thought they (themselves) were the most important person in the universe? No? Seems like those two things are mutually exclusive in Paul’s mind (and he chose not to get married) and in our personal experience!

#5 Love doesn’t lose it’s temper. This could be a sermon in itself right? I’ll admit it, my family doesn’t always get my best, because they get me when I’m hungry, tired, done with work, and ready for a break. Maybe some of you feel that way, too. Maybe your family and friends (and frenemies at work) are the ones who know where all your buttons are and push them with alarming speed. The thing is, if we really want to be about God, about love, disciples of Jesus, we need to learn to control our emotions, our actions, and our tongues.

James 3 launches into a discourse on controlling what we say and emphasizes it with this in 3:5: “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.” Um… yeah. If we’re going to say we want to be more like Jesus, then maybe we should start talking more like Jesus, too. And I don’t mean using Aramaic.

#6 Love forgives; it doesn’t worry about how many times it’s forgiven. Peter asked Jesus in Matthew 18 how many times he should forgive. Jesus told him seventy times seven (or a number that would’ve required a calculator). Jesus wasn’t telling Peter to keep track, but he was trying to help him see that forgiveness isn’t quantifiable. [Yes, you can forgive a person and still not allow them the freedom to hurt you again.] Jesus was telling Peter that forgiveness frees up the forgiver and the forgiven; Peter understood forgiveness better after he denied Jesus three times and still became the rock on which Jesus would build the church (John 21).

#7 Love cares more about God being first than who comes in second, and always finds the best. We live in a competitive society. We want to sell more, do more, make more, earn more, last longer, whatever. And when we sit back and think about it, thanks to Cosmos we even have a picture of it, we’re just a really small blip in the big picture. But if we can recognize that we’re part of God’s picture, or as the image goes- we’re important enough to have our pictures on God’s refrigerator- then our place, our finish in the race, doesn’t matter, but we’re seeking the best for ourselves and everyone else. That’s love.

#8 Love never looks backwards. Frank Sinatra sang “regrets, I’ve had a few” in “My Way,” but supposedly he ended up hating that song, too. I’ve never been much for giving regrets a lot of my attention, because the present and future are the only things we can control. Sure, Hollywood wants us to consider the romantic story where the girl marries the wrong guy only to reconnect with the right guy in the middle of a lightning storm (Sweet Home Alabama) or during a coma (While You Were Sleeping). The truth is, we can regret it all we want, but love doesn’t worry about what it can’t change.

#9 Love keeps going to the end… and it never dies. I imagine love personified like the Energizer bunny. “He just keeps going and going and going.” Love can’t die because real love comes from God, it is God living and moving in us. Love doesn’t give up because it’s breathing the belief that “there’s always a chance!” like Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber. It doesn’t die because it’s unkillable, like Westley in The Princess Bride.

And finally, #10, Love recognizes that the here and now are incomplete, but that what comes next will be awesome, amazing, healing, life-giving, forever, and better-than-anything-you’ve-ever-seen. Love knows that we’ve been given one life and we better do our best with it, but it doesn’t worry about after death because that’s in God’s hands and we know it is pain-free, trouble-free, and God-focused. Love knows that things are broken here, that there’s not a reason for everything, and that living into God’s plan is the most important thing.

Whew, ten earmarks of love. What a whirlwind. We may never perfect any one of them, but if we keep them in the forefront of our minds, if we really practice them, there’s a strong possibility that in the end, we’ll figure this whole love thing out.

How will you make unconditional love your focus this week? Who will you love better, more completely?

The more you love, the purer you get.

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James Rollins’ The 6th Extinction (Book Review)

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

The tenth book in James Rollins’ SIGMA series, The 6th Extinction, finds  Gray Pierce, Painter Crowe, Monk Kokkalis, and Lisa Cummings, and a few newbies fighting against time and a resourceful energy to stop the onslaught of a lethal chemical released in Northern California. It will take SIGMA’s agents around the world, with ties to Egypt and Antarctica, in a novel that proves that Rollins’ understanding of biology, technology, history, and sociology know no bounds.

Just when the former veterinarian seems to be giving us too many pieces of scientific detail or corporate explanation, the pieces prove to efficiently tie together a piece of our puzzle. But he’s not just spinning us around on an emotionless adventure (or just adrenaline-rushing anyway): we’re into the thick of Alzheimer’s with Pierce’s father and Crowe is supposed to be wrapping up plans for his pending wedding. These characters of Rollins’ are more real than we’d expect from the serial thriller genre, and he’s imbued his animals (remember the vet degree) with personified attributes as well.

But the chase is on, and we figure the only thing driving a plot of this size can be… money. Sure, our heroes have resources, too, but in Rollins’ world, they are always outnumbered and outgunned and still find a way to muscle through, to stick together, to save the day. We can expect it to get gritty (go back and read about Monk’s cyberbiologic hand), but we imagine that this summer read will end with SIGMA victorious.

Just to be clear, this isn’t a casual beach read. Sure, it’s entertaining, but it still comes across as literature to be chewed on, not sipped down. Rollins’ smart writing gives us the adventure, the humor, the humanity, and the adventure- nothing is wasted, and nothing is sacrificed. All of which is pretty amazing for a guy who has been delivering books at quite the clip lately. One can only expect that there are more on the way!

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View From The Shore #2: Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (A Mustard Seed Musing)

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

For something different, we decided we’d tackle the sand dunes. Not exactly beachfront, but my wife assured our children that it would be fun– it was thirty years ago! All grumbling aside, it turned out to be a fabulous morning… once you got to the top of a dune and could look out over the beach, the sound, and the crazy tourists trying to learn how to hang glide.

But the view from the bottom of the dune was significantly different.

At the bottom of the dune, all you could see was… more dune. Sand. An occasional hardy plant. And more sand.

The hike to the top was tough in the soft sand that was ever shifting beneath my feet. The ground wasn’t stable enough to grip onto, and the incline was high. The sun was beating down by midmorning, and the weight of a tired three-year-old, well, that didn’t help either. Once, I looked up to see how much farther we had to go and realized that wasn’t actually going to help my morale. But getting to the top was worth it, and looking back, I could see the distance we’d climbed.

A panoramic view of sand, sea, and sky was lit up like a post card. Animal tracks reminded us that it wasn’t quite as civilized as home. The exuberance of the hang gliders, upon reaching their peak, was transferable. We’d conquered a dune, and reached the top!

Only to realize that another dune, a taller, steeper dune awaited us just down and up again.

Isn’t it amazing how life can be like that sometimes?

At the bottom of a tough experience, it can appear that this is all there is, that the ‘sand’ in your life is all-consuming? As you walk through it, it sometimes feels like you just might never make it to the top? Yet, when you get to the top, you can see back through it and recognize what you’ve survived, overcome, accomplished, waded through, sacrificed for, achieved in the process. And then it’s on to the next challenge.

I’m sure the experience for my three year old was different; he probably felt more like I do when my world seems too tough and I feel whiny. That’s when God picks me up, throws me on his shoulders and says, “okay, you’re done? Now you’re ready for me to take this? No problem!”

In the end, I hope I’ll remember all this the next time there’s a “dune” in my life. It’s not the end of the world, just a small mountain to climb, just something to be accomplished. There ain’t no mountain high enough that will keep me from getting through.

 

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Michael Murphy’s The Yankee Club: Prohibition Age Conspiracy Fires Away (Book Review)

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Set in 1933, The Yankee Club is a historically aware thriller that blends the age of Prohibition with a love story and a flair for espionage. The protagonist, Jake Donovan, is a retired gumshoe-turned-novelist who returns to New York with the hopes of reclaiming his lost love, Laura, and finishing the latest of his hardboiled pulps. But danger awaits him on his old stomping grounds, where low-level mobsters want revenge and his ex-girlfriend drags him into a conspiracy aimed at establishing a more communistic approach to the American dream.

Michael Murphy’s prose is quick, and quick-witted, with a blend of easy style and substance that found me breezing through the book in one sitting. I’m no expert on Prohibition but I recognized the clever inclusion of the musician Cole Porter (and a shout-out to “Anything Goes”), as well as that of Babe Ruth as a New York Yankee (that could’ve moved this Red Sox fan to tears). It’s all layers of the story that add to its genuineness as a period piece, but which don’t distract from the main flow.

Even after Donovan’s ex-private eye partner is gunned down and Donovan himself is left for dead, we’re still most concerned with whether Jake can recapture Laura’s heart. She’s engaged to another man, one who we’re quickly disposed to liking, even as the plot broadens, and we recognize that a group of influential businessmen are unhappy with FDR’s New Deal. Suddenly, we’ve ratcheted up from a breezy Dick Tracy to a more clandestine story, mixing in Donovan’s old friends, police corruption, and much more.

Murphy quietly welcomes us into this world he created, but quickly makes us care about his characters, even as we laugh along with some of the lighter moments. This is a terrific read, and I highly recommend it!

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View From The Shore #1: The Waves Of Life (A Mustard Seed Musing)

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

It wasn’t the first wave my youngest asked to explore with me. We’d already jumped to avoid getting pounded by a couple of shore-breaking waves. But this wave, this wave was the most powerful one we’d seen that morning.

The wave picked me up and flung me down, tossing his little body around as well. And for a split second, I was terrified. Everything was out of control, nothing felt right. But I scooped him up and saw that he was all wet but hardly concerned. Wiping water from his eyes, I realized he had every expectation that I had everything under control.

Hours later, as I surveyed the ocean from my beach chair, I thought about the way that this was pretty typical of life. We think things are going along just fine; we’ve handled the waves, the undertow, the occasional jellyfish or crab. We’ve got this under control.

And then, wham! One wave, one blow, one event, and suddenly, our lives don’t feel right. They are out of control. Like waves I’ve body surfed, they take us up and crash us down to the bottom, holding us down, taking our breath away, crushing us into darkness.

A few months ago, I found myself in a conversation with a man who was sharing his doubts about God and church. “Why’d Jesus need to die on the cross? Is that really even a thing that matters for all of this to work? I just don’t see the point,” he exclaimed over lunch one day.

I paused, reflecting, and then asked, “Have you ever been stuck in a situation that you couldn’t get out of on your own?”

The man said he couldn’t remember a time when that had been true, that life had always seemed to be a breeze. There was no tension, no friction, not terrifying third act from which his life couldn’t recover without help.

I told him that I thought he was fooling himself, but maybe it’s all in your perspective.

I remember the debts I couldn’t pay financially until people showed up and helped me out.

I remember the car accident that left me trapped in an overturned car.

I remember the waves that caught me as a child and held me under until my father’s strong hands lifted me up off the bottom.

Maybe it’s all in your perspective, but here’s my truth: the waves will come, the storms will blow, the seas will rage, and we can’t stop them. What we can do is reflect on where we stand and who stands with us, because we can know control that. We can know who we are and whose we are, and reflect in the peace that strong hands still hold us, even when all around us it seems dark and terrifying.

I saw today that my son wasn’t scared- because he knew I had him. And I need not fear the storms in my life, for I know who has me to, even as I battle the waves. How different would our community and churches look if we actually believed like that?

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Guardians Of The Galaxy: Hooked On (More Than) A Feeling (Movie Review)

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Amidst a creative blend of eye-popping special effects (complete with Bradley Cooper’s CGI Rocket “I’m Not a Raccoon” and more battles than Star Wars and Star Trek combined) and poignant story lines about different individuals of various races seeking family and meaning, Marvel/Disney prove that they can take a group of unknown comic book characters and turn out a blisteringly funny adventure of epic proportions.

The first time I saw the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy, my wife turned and looked at me, and said, “Please tell me you don’t think that looks cool.”

To which I replied: “Honey, ok, I don’t …think that looks cool.” (And I winked, but it was dark and she might not have seen that.)

Having seen the movie, which shocked me with a 92% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com, I will confess: this movie is flat-out cool.

The plot: Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) plays Indiana Jones/Han Solo and snatches an orb that possesses the power to destroy whole planets. He’s intercepted first by world-killing villain Thanos’ cohort, Ronan the Accuser’s (Lee Pace) henchmen, then Thanos’ ‘daughter,’ Gamora (Zoe Saldana), then Rocket and the tree-like Groot (Vin Diesel), and finally, the Nova Corps (headed by a clever John C. Reilly). Sentenced to imprisonment in space, they realize they must break out together to get the orb away from Ronan. Along the way, they pick up Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), who wants revenge on Ronan for killing his wife and child.

You can tell early on that this is headed for a Guardians versus Ronan collision course. [Of course, a Bautista’s Drax versus The Rock’s Hercules would be very entertaining.] But while you can read about how funny and exciting the movie is somewhere else, thanks to the 1960s soundtrack Quill plays to and things like his giving himself the ‘code name’ Starlord, but I’m most interested in the deeper stuff.

This is ultimately all about family. Quill loses his mother to cancer and never knew his father. Drax lost his family to Ronan, and was basically held together by his desire for vengeance, until he meets the rest of the Guardians. Rocket is angry at being a scrapped together blend of cyborg parts and … raccoon. Groot has more to him than we can hear, but when he finally breaks his cycle of “I am Groot,” we know that this family is what he’s been looking for. Nowhere else has it been more blatantly hammered home that “everyone has lost some family” and that we need each other to make it through. [As an aside, it seems that we do church best when we actually take care of each other… like a family functioning the way it should.]

In the end, heroism is a choice. This writes itself from a theological perspective. Quill wants to be a superhero but has never been a leader, yet, he’s the one who recognizes that the ragtag group can’t run from their obligation to stop Ronan. Rocket says, “so you’re asking us to die?” incredulously, and Quill-turned-Starlord says, “Yeah, I guess I am.” In John 15:13, Jesus said, “greater love has no man than this that he lay his life down for his friend.” Each character makes a decision at one point or another in the climax to put their own life on the line (not unlike Tony Stark/Iron Man’s decision at the end of The Avengers.) But the fact that each of them chooses to follow Quill’s call to action proves that he is a leader, and that they are sacrificial even if they can’t see it yet.

Jesus also said, “If any of you wants to be my disciple, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24 ESV). It’s in that moment of the movie, when these gunrunning smuggler-murderer-thieves turn from their own self-centered lifestyle and live for each other and for the world Ronan intends to destroy that they become the Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s then that they become heroes, that they stop living for feelings and momentary happiness, and start living for the greater good.

Guardians of the Galaxy is the best movie I’ve seen this summer, and I’ve seen my share. But it’s also the movie with the most meaning of the group of Marvel movies I’ve seen, too. It proves that you don’t have to be a Guardians fan to enjoy the film, or even a superhero fan. You just have to be ready to dream, ready to laugh, and ready to hope that you too would step up when the universe is on the line.

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Heaven’s Room (A Mustard Seed Musing)

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

No sermon this week as I’m out of the pulpit, but this nugget of a story has been toying with my subconscious for a few weeks.

The kingdom of heaven is like the story of a man died and went to heaven. Having been a churchgoer all of his life, and being fluent in both the Scriptures of the Bible and the issues of his day, he arrived at the gates with the knowledge that grace had saved him. Still, he was reasonably surprised to discover that it was his own pastor who greeted him at the gates.

“Why, pastor, I thought it was St. Peter who’d meet me here!” he exclaimed, clapping a hand on the pastor’s back. “My, you do look well!”

“Certainly, my friend,” the pastor replied, shining slightly as he spoke. “There’s a certain amount of getting acclimated here that lets you get comfortable. You’ll see. Let me show you around.”

The two men walked into heaven, and the newcomer noticed the way that light seemed to emanate everywhere. People laughed and smiled, and everyone appeared fit and healthy, amidst a garden of beautiful plants with animals of all manner running about. When they came to the first building, Bill inclined that his former parishioner should enter first.

Inside of the deceptively large building, a solemn celebration of the Eucharist was underway. Priests shook incense everywhere, and the people in the pews glowed as they participated in the prayers and recitations.

After a few moments of restless sitting, the man exclaimed in a forced whisper, “I’m a good Protestant!” and his pastor led him out of the door toward another building. Here, he barely made it through the common area, where coffee was being consumed and donuts shared, as the sounds of a raucous rock concert shook the partitions.

“C’mon, Pastor, you know that’s not my style!” he complained, and the pastor took them back out, but not before reaching for a donut himself.

In the courtyard, a group of musicians had set up simple percussion and some stringed instruments, and led a group of relaxed worshippers in Taize. The newcomer hurried on by, but was drawn by the sound of the piano to another structure.

Upon entering, he quickly stepped to the side. “Oh, this is black church,” he whispered. Watching the congregation with their hands in the air, and the sporadic explosion of call and response, he wiped his hands on his pants and headed for the door.

Hurrying to keep up, the pastor arrived at the next building as the man passed through the portico. With a sigh of relief, his former parishioner settled into the back row as the organist fired up “Amazing Grace,” and the congregation sang along.

“This, this is heaven,” the man breathed.

“Well,” the pastor said, fading from the man’s view but reappearing as the Apostle Peter… who still looked a bit like the pastor. “Let me show you something, before you get too comfortable.”

Taking his hand and stepping outside, the pastor/Peter led the new man outside, as the structures they had entered faded and were replaced by something brighter, centered around the pulsing glory of God. Slowly, the man turned, realizing that he could still hear the organ, but now it was joined by the piano, and the Taize chanting, the bass guitar, the everyday household materials-turned-percussion instruments, and the voices of millions of people singing a song.

“This, my friend, is heaven,” said the pastor/apostle/angel. “There are no churches in heaven, just plenty of room.”

“But, all these people know the words,” said the man finally. “What are they singing?!”

“That,” said the angel, with a smile. “That’s love.”

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Linwood Barclay’s No Safe House: Family First? (Book Review)

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Revisiting a previous story isn’t ‘typical’ Linwood Barclay, but in No Safe House, he picks up the story of Terry and Cynthia Archer from No Time For Goodbye. Previously, the Archers worked with a criminal named Vince to find out the truth behind Cynthia’s past and the disappearance of the Archer’s daughter, Grace. Now, the three find themselves drawn into a series of break-ins and murders after Grace and her boyfriend attempt to joyride a stolen car. Want a thrilling, emotion-thumping ride?

I’ve enjoyed every Barclay thriller I’ve read (Tap on the Window was just a month ago), and his ability to blend the ongoing criminal activities with realistic familial interactions and emotions makes it deeper than a run-of-the-mill crime caper. We see the aftereffects of the previous book as they impact the Archers’ marriage, and their ability to parent; we see that Vince’s life has been shattered by those events, but that his desire to be more like Terry has grown.

Overall, there are a few themes, some more obvious than others. Grace does typical teenage acting out, but she falls into that category of teen who discovers that there are things that go bump in the night, with consequences to boot. Terry proves that family comes before anything else, risking safety, public perception, his job, etc. all in the name of taking care of his daughter. Criminals who dance over the bold lines find that the violence they perpetuate catches up with them sooner or later.

Fans of Harlan Coben will like this less-wisecrack-focused mystery/thriller, that has more of a hook at the end than some of Barclay’s other novels. It ultimately asks us to consider what we would do for love and honor, and who we let into our family even if they’re not biological. Maybe it’s the continuation of the Archers’ storyline that makes it deeper than some, but whatever it is, Barclay provides a pulse-pounding thriller that makes for a great summer read.

 

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