Grace is the free and unmerited favor of God.
It is the knowledge that you are pleasing to God right now regardless of what you have or haven’t done.
Grace is the realization that you have already earned a place in the kingdom of God, but you didn’t do anything to get it.
Grace is knowing that the law has already been fulfilled. There isn’t anything more you can do or anything you can add on to make it any better.
Our oldest son, Christopher, and his wife, Elizabeth, treated us to a rare delicacy this last weekend (at least rare for us). As a belated birthday dinner for Marti, he went out and got his mother her favorite food — whole, live, Maine lobster — four big whoppers, still wriggling and snapping their tails. The last time I can remember live lobster was probably 20 years ago when we lived in New England.
Think of everyone you meet today as someone for whom Christ died. And He died so that person could be saved — rescued — reclaimed as a good idea, the way God intended.
Christ would have died to save that person were he or she the only person on the face of the earth. It’s not that together, enough people make enough reason for Christ to die. The value of a person is not cumulative, i.e. enough of them will tip the scale and make them all worth saving. No, each one is worth saving were he or she the only one. The value is not in numbers, the value is in the individual.
I always love it when science proves the truth to be true, in this case, science proves that we were made to worship, and that worship improves our outlook on life, and even our health. That’s what an article in Parade Magazine this last weekend said and what I wrote about in the Catch yesterday. Of course the magazine article didn’t talk about worship — it talked about “awe” — but it was, in fact, all about worship.
Because it was in Parade Magazine, that little under 25-page newsprint magazine that accompanies most Sunday morning papers all over the country, you might have seen it yesterday. It was the feature article and had a picture of the earth taken from the moon, with the moonscape in the foreground. The title of the article was “Awe: How the soul-stirring wonder sparked by a shooting star or a majestic peak can transform your health and happiness.” It was about the scientifically investigated benefits of awe and wonder on the human condition.
You could call this an addendum to yesterday’s Catch, so if you missed yesterday’s Catch, you will definitely want to go to catchjohnfischer.com and read “Paranoia at the polls” first. But there’s one other thing to mention about voting in November that I meant to include, but left off, and that is the fact that we vote for a lot more things than the next President. The next President of the United States gets so much attention that it’s easy to think that’s the only thing that matters, but, in many ways, it’s the least thing that matters, especially if you’re not in a swing state. Hillary is going to take California regardless of which way I vote, so why bother? Well, there are a lot of other things we will be voting for in this state, just like there are for you.
I understand the dilemma facing many of our Catch members this November. “Who to vote for?” or should we say, “Who to vote against?” Never in the history of American politics have there been two more disliked candidates to choose from, even from one’s own party. I’ve been thinking about this, and though I am not a political expert, nor do I have the last word on the election, I do have some thoughts that may ease your pain a little bit.
I postponed BlogTalkRadio last night because I didn’t want to interfere with the Vice Presidential debate. I thought it would be a good idea if we all watched it so I sent out an email to that effect. Now I’m having second thoughts as to whether that was such a good idea after all. I watched it and only felt dirty afterwards. Honestly, I wanted to take a bath. I felt embarrassed for any kids watching. These were very important adults, seeking the second highest office in the land, behaving badly in front of millions of people. Neither could resist the opportunity to tear the other down at the slightest provocation.
…and a very pleasant good evening to you all, wherever you may be.
He had a voice that was made for the transistor radio. It was a match made in baseball heaven.
We cannot say goodbye to baseball, 2016, without joining everybody else in the sports world for a fitting send-off to Vin Scully, voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers for 67 years. I understand all the fuss because I grew up in southern California and knew that velvety voice well on my bright red transistor radio. I had that radio taped to my handlebars while I delivered papers. I had it tucked under my pillow at night while I fell asleep. I even played I was Vinny announcing imaginary games in my backyard that I made up from throwing a tennis ball on our roof and trying to catch it as it glanced unpredictably off the shingles. If I couldn’t catch it, it was a single, double, triple or home run depending on where it landed in the yard. I played complete games with lineup cards and score keeping, and, of course, Vin Scully announcing every play: “There’s a sharp line drive into the right field corner, that should score everybody. In comes Wills, in comes Davis, in comes Drysdale, the throw to second — not in time — it’s 6-3 Dodgers!”
When you got nothin’
You got nothin’ to lose. – Bob Dylan
The Angels played their last game of the season yesterday. That means there’s only five months until spring training. And believe me, spring training is all that Angels fans have to look forward to now. No postseason for these guys. They’ll be watching the playoffs from home. At least they didn’t finish in the cellar. As a matter of fact, they finished on a high note, winning 8 of their last 10 games. No one else in the league finished that well.
John Fischer The Catch 