Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus, page 120:
We want our kids to know the one good story so well that when they see Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Frodo, Anne of Green Gables, Ariel, or Sleeping Beauty, they can recognize the strands of truth and deception in them.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” –Galatians 2:20
“God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.” –John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life, page 37. [Art by Karalee Reinke, colorization by Alex Medina.]
Coming fresh off the completion of his book, Jeremy Lin: The Reason for the Linsanity, Christian philosopher Timothy Dalrymple says yes. Here’s one reason why:
God does not care about sports in themselves. God cares about the people who play them.
God cares about the people who watch and enjoy sports and whose lives are affected by sports. And God works through sports, as God works through all things, for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
Training the body is, or can be, a profound and necessary school for the spirit. And in today’s age, when so many Christians live lives of comfortable complacency, when the rigor and striving of faith have been so terribly deemphasized, sports can serve an important role in reminding us of the importance of discipline and collective sacrifice in the pursuit of a greater goal.
So if sports can help us grow closer to God and more mature in our faith — and they can — then yes, God cares about sports for what can be accomplished through them.
This morning I posted a new Easter essay on the Desiring God blog: Our Tears Are Being Undone.
As many of you have probably already guessed, most of my blogging work will now be focused there. I am greatly honored to be a part of the incredible DG team here in Minneapolis, focusing my energy on helping to curate, resurface, and spread John Piper’s 30-years-and-running gospel preaching legacy.
[Hyperventilation.]
What that means is the Miscellanies blog (a little blog I started in 2006 to fill a ministry lag), will still be used but only for occasional posts, perhaps once a week or so. If you’d like to follow me, you can always do that more effectively via Twitter or Facebook. I’ll be using both of these channels concurrently to point to my work online, my travels, quotes and quips from mostly dead guys, and of course pictures of stuff I point my iPhone at.
Thank you for reading and following this blog. Because you come here, ministry opportunities have been opened for me (like book writing). So thank you!
Tony
From the meditative doodles of my lovely wife this morning…
John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life, page 37:
God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.
Tony Reinke 