Middletree

------------------------------------------------ There's lots of talk about Stevie Johnson, the Bills wideout who dropped the game-winning touchdown and then, after the game, tweeted: I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO… I feel bad for the guy. He’s getting mocked across the nation, and some of the criticisms are along the lines of “it’s just a game.” Such criticisms are very ignorant. Catching a ball is what this guy was hired to do. It’s his living. I get upset when things I try to do at my job don’t go well. Doesn’t matter if your job is a plumber, programmer, pastor, doctor, or athlete. In the case of an athlete, a failure on the job is witnessed by millions of people. To this day, athletes like Leon Lett, Bill Buckner, and Robin Ventura, who should be known for having great careers, are instead known for one bad moment. They’re regarded as failures despite being b...

I was alerted to Billy Coffey by a tweet from Karen Spears Zacharias earlier this year. He's a blogger who has a day job and lives in Virginia, and has just published his first book, Snow Day. After reading several of his blog posts, I was intrigued by the book and had meant to purchase it. As it turns out, I won a free copy in a promotion by the publisher. I am under no obligation to give any review, positive or negative, about Snow Day. Having said that, I'm recommending Snow Day very highly.  This is a story about a man named Peter whose circumstances are similar to that of Mr Coffey (mid-30's, wife and two kids, one with diabetes, factory job), with some differences. In particular, Peter is facing a very tough situation:  an impending layoff in a small town with little in the way of alternatives for him if he should lose his job. Snow Day takes place in one day: a winter day in which the protagonist decides to take a day off. He spends the day running errands at t...

With the recent mid-term elections, I've been hearing a lot about how wrong it is for evangelicals and social-justice Christians to hold to the political right and Left, respectively, as the answer to the nation's problems. I, too went through a time where I questioned why so many Protestants wrapped up their faith and their politics to the point where the two couldn't be separated. I, too, want to see this stopped, because Christians fighting Christians about whose politics are more Christian is, um, not Christian. But as much as I love these calls to stop the madness, I don't think it will work. As long as political liberals hold and defend the party line on the two big moral issues (abortion and gay issues), there will always be a backlash from those Christians on the Right. Like many Christians, I've asked the questions about why these two issues are picked as hot-button topics. In particular, why are conservative Christians so vocal about homosexuality an...