Middletree

Great things about the regular season: 1. Rangers get the most wins ever for the franchise (96). 2. Michael Young gets 213 hits, tied for the lead. This is special, and probably underappreciated.  Each year, maybe 5 players in baseball get 200 hits. Young has done this 6 times. 3. Napoli and Beltre, two Angels rejects, help us beat the Angels. 4. The Rangers win the last 6 games, refusing to coast after they clinched. 5. We did it with several solid starting pitchers, not just one Alpha dog.

Billy Coffey showed promise with his first novel,  "Snow Day", which was good overall, and great in places. But the leap forward from "Snow Day" to "Paper Angels" is a giant one for the author. From the very beginning, this story had my attention, and it never let go. The main character, Andy Sommerville, is a lifelong bachelor who owns a gas station. A severe injury puts him in the hospital and forces him to face many non-physical wounds from his past. Wounds which didn't so much shape him into the man he is as much as they derailed him somewhat from what he was made to be. As he is shown the meaning and importance of each of these hurts (represented by various mementos he had collected over the years), a new friend named Elizabeth helps guide him, addressing each wound by first peeling back the bandages that had covered them, sometimes for decades. Most people have wounds that have stayed with us for years. What sets Andy apart is that he has a...

Isaiah 64:8 "But now, O LORD, You are our Father, We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand." Some years ago, it was pointed out to me that our relationship to God is described in several metaphorical ways, all of which matter. Some authors/teachers have even been known to rank the relationship descriptions in some way--for example, in levels of intimacy: Clay/Potter Slave/Master Sheep/Shepherd Subject/King Son/Father Bride/Groom While I cannot argue with the theology of such a ranking, it does have the unintended side effect of causing the reader to dismiss the relationship descriptions listed earlier on the list. It's just as important to understand the potter/clay dynamic between us and God as it is anything else. He mentioned that particular picture dozens of times in books by no less than 4 biblical authors: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Paul, and John. Yes, He's our loving Father, but focusing only on Him as Father can lead us...