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| These are the words that a good friend of mine wrote on his journal while he was at his favorite coffee shop. Next to him, was a college student whom he caught reading those very words on his journal. Let me cut and paste just a little of the newsletter that my friend send out to me.
I could only imagine what must have been going on in his head...careful not to make any sudden moves and upset me, the volatile journalist. The twenty minutes that followed was a quiet drama in which this young man's face betrayed his unspoken desire to save my life with a compassionate word or a gentle plea. But he left...with no hope imparted. As I shared this episode with my wife, I found myself jokingly say, "That guy had a chance to save my life and he didn't do a thing!"
However, on the next page of my friend's journal wrote John 12:24 - "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." I guess my friend had 3 points in his newsletter. The first one that the only hope that can be found is in Jesus. Two, his desire to die...today. And three, the unity in Christian fellowship (by him sending me a newsletter). You see, I've known this friend since the 6th grade. We played on the same Junior High Basketball team together and eventually he chose football and I basketball. We were friends, but never really hung out outside of school. We never even knew each other were Christian till somehow he visited me at UCI when he was down south. We used to always just mess around in Ceramics class. He actually broke one of my project sculptures. LoL...to this day, he tells me that it's active proof that it wasn't properly engineered to survive a gentle nudge. Just recently, we met up. He discussed his vision to pursue the ministry, especially with college students. I actually brought him out to NewLife (he was the white guy that I brought out a couple months back. Maybe some of you remember him). This was his first newsletter sent to me. As I read this newsletter, I was and am blown away. The same friend who I used to have battle-like basketball practices and competitive matches between who's athletic team was better is actually more than a team mate. Even more than a friend. He's a brother. I can honestly say, his letter was a breath of fresh air. It was a reminder to me that I need to die continually...today...and that we as brothers and sisters in Christ ought to encourage one another with words and one another's testimonial life. There is no excuse. Only with death can new life be brought forth. Only by grace can the love of Christ be testified to in this hopeless world. I was reminded of this Scriptural verse.
Romans 15:1-6
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: "The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me." For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As Nicolas Cage's character Memphis Raines in the movie, "Gone in 60 Seconds" depicted when he risked everything he had to save his brother's life, "A brother's love...is a brother's love". This is what Christian unity ought to look like. No excuses, no limits...but a brother's love.
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| Maravich was born in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania Maravich would obsessively spend hours practicing ball control tricks, passes, head fakes, and long range shots. The elder Maravich required his son to make 100 shots from the free throw line in their driveway every night after supper before he would be allowed to go to bed. Maravich often made 99 straight before deliberately missing the next several shots just so he could continue playing ball outside. Maravich once succeeded in making 500 consecutive free throws one evening after school, stopping only when it became too dark to see the rim, illuminated only by the elder Maravich's flashlight. While Maravich would tell friends later in life he always desired to play basketball for Notre Dame, his father was the varsity coach at LSU and he felt obligated to go there. In his first game on the LSU freshman team Maravich put up 50 points, 14 rebounds, and 11 assists against Southern Louisiana State. COLLEGE
He is still the all-time leading NCAA Division I scorer with 3,667 points scored and an average of 44.2 points per game. He accomplished this without the benefit of a 3 pt-line and despite the fact that NCAA rules prohibited him from playing on the varsity team as a freshman. Maravich made an average of 13 shots a game from what is now the three-point line; if the three-point line had existed when he played, he would have averaged 57 points a game.
NBAAfter graduating from LSU in 1970, Maravich was the third selection in the first round of that year's NBA DRAFT and made league history when he signed a $1.6 million contract — one of the highest salaries at the time — with the Atlanta Hawks. He wasted little time becoming a prime time player by averaging 23.2 points per game his rookie season and being named to the NBA All Rookie Team. After spending four seasons in Atlanta, Maravich was traded to the New Orleans Jazz for 8 players, where he peaked as an NBA showman and superstar. He made the All-NBA First Team in 1967 and 1977 and the All-NBA Second Team i 1973 and 1978. He led the NBA in scoring in the 1976-77 with 31.1 points per game. Maravich retired in the fall of 1980.
Later life
A leg injury during the 1977-78 NBA season started the downward spiral into alcoholism which had started with one sip at 16 years of age (Pete quote), and signaled the decline of his career. After the injury forced him to leave basketball in the fall of 1980, Maravich became a recluse for two years. Through it all, Maravich said he was searching "for life." He tried the practices of yoga and Hinduism, read Trappist monk Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain and took an interest in the field of ufology, the study of unidentified flying objects. He also explored vegeterianism and macrobiotics. In 1982, he became a Christian and began traveling the country sharing his new found faith in Jesus Christ. Lying in bed one night unable to sleep, he was besieged by memories – troubled thoughts of his past sins. “I knew right from wrong,” he said, “yet I continually, habitually fell into these things. Things kept coming up all night long. Finally I just cried out: Lord, can you save me? Can you forgive me? Because I’ve done some of the dirtiest things in the world…I got off the bed and asked Christ to come into my life, to forgive my sins. And from that day, my life has changed so dramatically, I can’t explain it." Pete knew Jesus as Lord for five years before he died. And in that time, he gave himself to serving God – with all the intensity he’d ever had. He wanted more than anything to give back to the Lord, Who had given him so much. And his gratitude showed most in his giving to others. “It’s like when I pick up a basketball.” He told Ben Kinchlow on the 700 Club last October. “I’m practicing in the Word every day. I’m practicing in prayer.” On January 5, 1988, Pete Maravich collapsed and died, at age 40, of a heart attack just after playing in a pickup basketball game in the gym at a local Church in Pasadena. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be a rare congenital defect; he had been born with a missing left coronory artery, a vessel which supplies blood to the muscle fibers of the heart. His right coronory artery was grossly enlarged and had been compensating for the defect. Most people with the kind of heart condition Maravich had die before they are 20; a relative few may live to 30. Maravich, who had been retired as an athlete for seven years, died at 40. ''For a guy to go 10 years in the N.B.A. and have a congenital anomaly like that is, to say the least, very unusual,'' said Dr. Paul Thompson of Brown University, an expert on sudden death who was quoted in an Associated Press story Wednesday. ''How could a guy like that run up and down the court for 20 years?'' The question is provocative. WE often talk about someone having heart. That their heart was in it. Songs tell us we gotta have heart. Could it be that Maravich, although with less physical heart than most, metaphorically had more? Could it be that he actually strengthened his heart because of his passionate involvement in the game? And was it this fulfillment that possibly contributed to his living virtually twice the expected lifetime? What did Dr. Thompson think? ''I often tell my patients, the heart bone is connected to the head bone,'' he said. ''There is no scientific proof that emotions and feelings and desire affect how we feel, but I think most physicians believe there is a correlation. It's entirely possible that Maravich's drive to excel and love for the game kept him alive.'' Did Pistol Pete have heart? ''Oh yes, oh sure,'' said Butch van Breda Kolff, who coached Maravich for two years with the New Orleans Jazz. ''No one learns to handle the ball the way Pete did and not love the game. The hours that he spent on it". A few years before his death, Maravich said: "I want to be remembered as a Christian, a person that serves Him to the utmost. Not as a basketball player."  | | |
| Augustine of Hippo. The famous Saint who was also a theologian, philosopher and bishop. He wrote an autobiography titled, Confessions in 397 AD, only a few years after he had become a bishop in Africa. When reading this book, it is as if you knew the man himself.
Peter Brown writes in his biography, Augustine of Hippo, "It was a classic document of the tastes of a group of highly sophisticated men. It told such men just what they wanted to know about- the course of a notable conversion; it asked of its readers what they made a habit of asking for themselves - the support of their prayers. It even contained moving appeals to the men-still standing aloof from the crowded basilicas of the Christians. The Confessions is very much the book of a man who had come to regard his past as a training for his present career. The Confessions are, quite succinctly, the story of Augustine's 'heart', or of his 'feelings'. The Confessions are one of the few books of Augustine's, where the title is significant. Confessio meant, for Augustine, 'accusation of oneself; praise of God'. It is this theme of Confession that would make Augustine's treatment of himself different from any autobiography available, at the time, to his readers. For the insistence on treatment by 'confession' has followed Augustine into his present life. This one book of the Confessions would have taken Augustine's readers by surprise: when it was read in Rome, for instance, Pelagius was 'deeply annoyed' by its tone. For what the conventional Christian wanted, was the story of a successful conversion. Like all too many such converts, the writer will insist on rubbing into us that he is now a different person, that he has never looked back. Seen in such a light, the very act of conversion has cut the convert's life in two; he has been able to shake off his past. The Confessions was an inner self-portrait sketched by a man that does not hide his sins nor his temptations, but that are confessed so that the Lord maybe be able to show the full self to himself. We have entered the world of a very sensitive man. It is this therapy of self-examination which has, perhaps, brought Augustine closest to some of the best traditions of our age."
"This is a confession to you, God, not to men, for what can they do to me. He should confess his weakness, so that He can help him who seeks hard and confesses." - Augustine of Hippo.
One may be inclined to call him 'real'. As true as that may be. Nonetheless, it isn't the most befitting for such a man. I like to call him shameless; shamelessly living off of every word of God.
"My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness" - 2 Corinthians 12:9
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| Sometimes, I get overwhelmed with my studies. Add 'life' to that, and things get pretty crazy. It's great when what I study can help me relax and put things into perspective. For those of the loyal few that still read this, take some time with me to relax and let our God put things into perspective for us.
Up now, slight man! Flee, for a little while, thy occupations; hide thyself, for a time, from thy disturbing thoughts. Cast aside, now, thy burdensome cares, and put away thy toilsome business. Yield room for some little time to God; and rest for a little time in him. Enter the inner chamber of thy mind; shut out all thoughts save that of God, and such as can aid thee in seeking him; close thy door and seek him. Speak now, my whole heart! Speak now to God, saying, I seek thy face; thy face, Lord, will I seek (Psalms 27:8). And come thou now, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how it may seek thee, where and how it may find thee. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also, I believe, -that unless I believed, I should not understand.
- St. Anselm of Canterbury
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| C.S. Lewis takes issue with anyone who tries to hold that Jesus was a great moral teacher. That is one interpretation of the Gospel's accounts of Jesus' life that simply will not do. Whatever Jesus was, he simply could not have been a great moral teacher. For Jesus repeatedly claimed to be God. We are left with three possibilities: either he is a liar, or he is a lunatic, or he is who he claims to be-supreme Lord. If either of the first two alternatives is correct, you would definitely not consider Jesus a great moral teacher. You would not want your children to be near him. Only the third alternative is both consistent with the claims Jesus made and a favorable interpretation of his character. But then, only one bodily posture, so to speak, remains to us: falling to our knees before him.
- Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing to Know
SICK. SEMINARY IS SWEET. I LOVE IT.
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