"Some people did some things"

“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!” Matthew 27:23

"Some people did some things"

This quote has made its way through the media outlets for the past few weeks and has stirred up many emotions from several different people. I do not know the lady who originally made this statement but, when I realized she was talking about the tragedy of 9/11, I was shocked by how casually she was speaking. She spoke as though it was an everyday event with little lasting consequences. I have thought about her statement for a few days and have been reminded of a few other events throughout history when some people did some things. Some people in Nazi Germany did some things and over 6 million members of the Jewish population were killed affecting the lives of millions of family members for generations. Millions of others lost their lives fighting in a World War to save countless others. Some people did some things in the past few years and their horrific actions have left a scar on the Roman Catholic faith that will possibly last forever. Their actions not only affected the victims of their crimes but have caused possibly millions of others to lose faith in their savior. At a point in the history of the United States, some people decided that one man was more deserving of the blessings and liberty our country has to offer because of the color of his skin and did some things. Those “things” caused generations of people to suffer through the racial prejudices that continue to cause a divide in our country. Toward the end of Jesus’ life on earth, He and Barabbas stood before Pilate as the Governor asked the people, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” The people, many who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles, did some things and all cried out, “Crucify Him”.

As Christians we are also called to, “Do some things.” We are called to go into the world and show our love of Jesus through our thoughts, words, and actions. We are called to pray for those in our lives, even the ones who we disagree with or consider an enemy. Even the people who, “do some things” we don’t agree with. These things we are called to do by our Heavenly Father will never make the news, we will never be known to the masses of people, and our name will not be known all over the world. However, the impact of the simple things we can do will last forever and will have eternal consequences for the many people we interact with each day. As a coach, I can pray daily for the young men who have been placed under my care. I can pray for their health as they play a crazy game but, more importantly, I can pray for their eternal salvation. I can pray for their lives to be forever changed by the saving grace of our Heavenly Father. No one will ever know the words I speak on behalf of these young men, but God is faithful to answer my prayers.

I believe God is calling all believers to also do some things. Not the kind of things that make the news or will be remembered throughout history, but the kind of things that will change a person’s life for eternity.


Let’s do some-thing!

Chad

"Standing in the fire but never feeling the heat"

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,

James 1:2

The past year of my life has been full of many first time experiences. After taking a position as a head football coach my life suddenly turned upside down with hiring a staff, meeting a new team, being presented with everyone’s list of problems, not knowing how to fix many of them, and several others I cannot list. It has been quite an experience so far and I am even more thankful for the many men I have worked for in the coaching profession who taught me by their example. Each day has brought it’s individual problems, needs, and concerns. Along with taking on the responsibility of being the head coach of a new team, my wife and I decided it would be a good time to begin the renovation of and the addition to a new house. We have spent the past year in a temporary house with our dresser in the dining room, boxes of items for the new house scattered throughout, and clothes jammed into closets and piled on spare beds. My wife has done an amazing job of coordinating the construction and making the difficult decisions about the house, all while I was away at work. Needless to say we are ready to finally settle into our new home in a few weeks and get our lives back in order. At least the amount of order a coaching family can expect. It has been a year of having to constantly focus on several issues at once and make the correct decision about each. We also continue to remind each other of how blessed we are to have lives that are filled with young people, new friends, and new and old challenges. We are also blessed to get to go through all this excitement together.

I was in church yesterday and I heard someone say, “Standing in the fire but never feeling the heat”. When I heard these words I thought about the past year my wife and I have spent together. A year full of blessings mixed in with challenges that forced us to step outside of our comfort zone. A year full of days filled with emotional ups and downs only to be reminded of our Heavenly Father who is ever present through the ups and the downs.

I know in my life, and I am sure in yours also, we become so discouraged by the flames that we forget our Heavenly Father is always walking before us, protecting us from the heat. After all, the flames of a fire are beautiful, when you are a safe distance away, but the heat is what pushes us away and keeps us from going further.

My prayer today was for God to give me the courage to not run from the flames and the faith to trust him to protect me from the heat.

Chad

What's your excuse?

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.  Romans 1:20

As a coach, you are in a unique position to spend your days with many of the best young people in the world. I get to be around them when they are still young enough to have the innocence of youth but are mature enough to have many great plans for their futures and unique views of the world in which they live. I am able to form a bond of trust that does not exist outside of the relationship between a coach and a player. But, there is always a young man on every team who does not respond to any of the coaches and continues to make bad decisions. Every coach can probably immediately think of the young person who they feel like they failed to connect with and worry about this young person’s future. I know there are a few in my twenty-six years of coaching.

Throughout this past season there was one particular young man who never seemed to respond to any of our coaches. It was a daily struggle to have him act appropriately, behave in class, and follow instructions. I felt like I would wake up each day and wait on the next bad report from another coach, administrator, or teacher. This particular young man has had several unfortunate and sad situations occur throughout his life. When I first heard this young man’s name, I continued to hear the same story of his childhood from former teachers and coaches. As a very small child he had witnessed the death of his mother but fortunately was too young to remember the details. From everything else I could learn about this young man, he lived with relatives who cared for him and wanted the best for him. I am sure he had many difficulties in his life but had also been given a chance for success if he will just take advantage of the blessings and learn from the negative. What stood out to me was the way many adults excused away each moment of bad behavior because of an event that occurred when this young man was very young. Each time his name would be mentioned in a conversation someone would remind me of this story. I am blessed to not only have the world’s best mother but I have spent my life with people who want the best for me and expect the best from me. One of my many prayers as a coach is to ask God to give me some insight into how to treat and respond to a young person who has had a much different life than me. It has bothered me that so many people allow a terrible event that happened many years ago to be his excuse.

The young man I am writing about has recently left the school where I work and moved to another school. I worry that the story will be told over and over again and his behavior will be excused away, over and over again. I hate for anyone, especially a young person to have so many challenges in his or her life. We all have challenges and many of us have challenges that we must deal with on a daily basis. How we allow those challenges to shape our lives makes all the difference.

For the past few weeks the eighth grade football players have been coming to the high school in the afternoon to lift weights with the varsity coaches. As they were leaving a few days ago one of these boys asked me if I knew the young man I have written about. I told him I did know him and hated that he was leaving our school. What he said to me next was interesting and something I have thought about since our conversation. He said, “Coach, he is my cousin and I hope he does not get into trouble at his new school. I am so tired of people using what happened to him as an excuse”. I was already thinking what a mature young man this thirteen year old must be and then he said, “My mother left me at the hospital the day after I was born and I have not seen her since but that is not going to change my life. I know one day when I have made it in life, she will show back up but it will be too late then”.

After he left for the day I began thinking about what he had told me and his reaction to his life’s challenge. Both boys have been greatly disappointed but the way they allow this challenge to shape their lives is drastically different. Both have missed out on a relationship with a loving mother who they know they can depend upon. Both have days when they wonder why the person who gave birth to them is no longer in their life. But one allows the challenge to be an excuse that so many accept as a good reason for poor behavior and bad choices. The other uses the challenge as a driving force to succeed in life, in his future career, and the way he treats others in his life. I have no doubt that this young man will be a success in his life regardless of the size of his bank account. He will one day have his own children who he will raise in a loving home. His mother may show up again one day and she will be the one who has missed out on spending her life with a young man of character in spite of the challenge she created for him many years earlier. I hope they are able to form a relationship but it will never be what it could and should have been.

It seems as though we live in a world of excuses. We could all blame bad parents, lack of money, or bad teachers for our lack of success in life. In recent years we have even heard the excuse of affluence. Someone actually had so much good in their life that they did not know the difference in right and wrong. I believe God places these challenges before us and expects us to use these obstacles to learn more about His love for us and to show others how we trust in Him through these challenges. These challenges can be our excuse for poor behavior or bad decisions or they can also be our excuse for succeeding in life and demonstrating God’s love for us even while facing our challenges each day. So far, one of the young men uses his challenge as an excuse for failure but the other sees his challenge as his excuse for success. So, what’s your excuse?

Chad

Live the life you've imagined?

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,  Ephesians 3:20

Since Christmas is only a week away, I agreed to go shopping with my wife and daughter. I am always amazed at what I will agree to do just to spend time with my daughter. We slowly drove through all the traffic to the stores we would visit. You all know the stores I am talking about. The ones where they sell a $10 dress for $300 but try to get you excited about a 20% off sale! We walked through several stores and eventually found one with the exact items we were hoping to find. I spent my time in the stores wandering around and making sarcastic comments about the prices. One particular store had several motivational signs on the wall. I walked around reading the signs and found one that said, “Live the life you’ve imagined”. I stood there for a minute thinking about the life I am blessed to live with a wife I love and two children I am very proud to call my own. I am blessed to go to a job each day that I enjoy and I wake up each morning looking forward to my day as a teacher and coach. Certainly a job I never imagined as a young person and my wife and children are much better than I could have ever imagined. I also began thinking about what my life would be like if I was living the life I imagined as a young person. As a young boy there were several lives I imagined I would live. I remembered being fascinated with the men who road on the back of the garbage truck and thought, what an awesome way to spend the day. At one time I hoped I would be a fireman so I could drive the fire truck and save people from fires. As I got older I imagined I would be a park ranger and live in the woods with the bears and wolves. There were other lives I imagined as a little boy and most were influenced by my latest favorite television show. I certainly never imagined the life I now live every day.

I am thankful God never allowed me to simply follow my imagination because He had a much different plan for my life. In Ephesians 3, He reminds us that He is able to do more in our lives than we can imagine. What if you or I were living the life we imagined? I would have missed all the exciting moments of my life. I would have missed the relationships that He arranged that will last a lifetime. I would have missed meeting my wife and having two amazing children. I also would have missed the trials and heartache He has lead me through. I am thankful for a future of many blessings that are greater than anything I could imagine.

Chad

Willing to sacrifice for an unknown?

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1

Our football team is planning to have pizza and a movie together later this week. The parents will provide the food and drinks and my job for the evening is to choose the movie. Watching a movie together as a team is a very simple event but is an invaluable moment for young men to spend together as a team, away from football. It also gives them an opportunity to be with their coach and his family in a setting much less intense than the practice field. I have spent the last few days deciding between a few movies but finally settled on my all-time favorite sports movie, Miracle. This is the story of the 1980 Olympic Hockey Team who beat the Soviet Union for the first time in over twenty years on their way to winning the gold medal. At the time of the 1980 Olympics, I was twelve years old and my brothers and I were hockey fans. Our hometown had a hockey team and we had quickly grown to love the sport and our team. We were all excited to see the U.S. Hockey Team in the Olympics but few people expected what would eventually happen. The U.S. Team consisted of college players, or recent graduates, and the Soviet Union was the most feared hockey team in the world. Their players were much older, much more experienced, and had played together for over ten years. This was before the United States began using, “Dream Teams” in the Olympics but, as Herb Brooks, the coach of the 1980 Team said, “We began using dream teams, but we seldom get the dream”. I hope I am not spoiling the movie for anyone but, the U.S. went on to defeat the Soviet Union in the semifinals and defeated Finland in the finals to win the gold medal. The whole country, or at least the boys in my house, went crazy with excitement. I have probably watched the movie a dozen times but still get nervous in the final minutes of the game as the U.S. is fighting to hold onto a one point lead. Not until Mr. Al Michaels, the announcer for the game, says, “Do you believe in Miracles” does my heart rate go back to normal.

My favorite moment in the movie is at the end when all the players are celebrating at the gold medal ceremony. Coach Brooks is talking over the scene and says the best part of the Olympics was watching the young players celebrate. He says it was a group of young men, from different backgrounds, who were willing to sacrifice for an unknown. This week, as I have talked with my team each day before practice, I have asked them, “Are you willing to sacrifice for an unknown?” Are they willing to work hard at the day’s practice with the knowledge that the game’s outcome may not be what they had hoped? Are they willing to work hard through the long days of the upcoming off-season without the promise of a starting position? Are they willing to sacrifice for an unknown? I hope they are because I believe that, even if the end result is not what they had dreamed about, they will discover something valuable about themselves that will last a lifetime.

The quote from this movie reminds me of our faith as a follower of Christ. As we learn of His promises we must have faith in what we cannot see and an assurance of a future planned by Him. While the world is searching for evidence of His existence we, as believers, must be willing to trust in the unseen. Are we willing to sacrifice for an unknown? As Christians we must wake up every day, asked for His guidance in our words and actions, and strive to live a life that reflects Christ within our heart. Like Him, being a servant to others, and working toward and trusting in, the unknown. Are you, and am I, willing to sacrifice for an unknown?


Chad