Gabe Bennett, Michael Bennett, David Owen and Dena Gattis are my friends.
They are also Braves fans.
I never have liked the Braves. Ever since Dad sprung for cable TV in our home in 1984, I was more intrigued by the unpredictability of Harry Caray calling Cubs games than the boredom of listening to the Braves announcers.
That being said, I'm not sure I remember a hotter offensive club in Major League baseball in my lifetime than the Braves. In their last five games, they've hit 20 home runs (one short of the MLB record for such a stretch), scored in double figures (the first team to do so since the 1930 Yankees), pounded out 91 hits, and scored 15, 11, 10, 15, and 14 runs in each of the games (a total of 65).
They are making it look like commercial league softball right now.
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Tomorrow morning, it's off to beautiful Lake Tahoe, California and this year's edition of the Tahoe Family Encampment. My itinerary is as follows: Meet with Paul Methvin on Friday to discuss future planning for the encampment, deliver the keynote on Saturday night, travel to San Francisco following the keynote with my good friend John Wiegand, speak on Sunday at the Pleasant View church in the Bay Area, catch the Giants/Padres game between assemblies on Sunday afternoon at AT&T Park, and teach class Monday through Thursday.
For the last five years, Tahoe has been one of the highlights of my year. I can't wait to get back and see many great Christian friends.
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The 30 kids attending our First Principles Day Camp experienced a gross disappointment yesterday as their afternoon activity came to an abrupt, screeching halt. You can read about their horrifying experience here.
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One more insight for you this morning from Donald Miller's To Own A Dragon, building on some thoughts I shared yesterday..
"Here's something else I noticed John do with his kids. Chris and Elle were arguing one time, and John felt like he raised his voice too loud in telling them to knock it off. Not long after that, maybe a few minutes, he went to them and told them he was sorry for yelling. They didn't seem to care, and it wasn't a big deal, but for some reason it stuck in my mind as an interesting thing for a father to do. I asked him about it the last time we talked, and John said he tries to apologize when he messes up as a dad, letting his kids now they are more important to him than his pride. He kind of laughed and admitted he screwed up fairly often. But then he said something I thought was pertinent to those of us who grew up without dads. John said another reason he apologized was because he didn't want his kids to have any negative perceptions about God. He said that the way a kids feels about their dad is sometimes projected onto God, so if he apologized when he messed up as a father, the kids would know that was his mistake, and didn't have anything to do with who God is.
I liked that idea because it reaffirmed that our fathers aren't God. They can help us understand who God is and how good He is, but they can also do a lot of damage. But God is God regardless, and if we take the Bible as true, it's good to think He is fathering us prefectly" (82-83).
