Petr is having his birthday party this weekend. It is a camping theme. 
The boys were playing some make believe game and play fighting. One of Petr’s friends was fighting with Andrej and he said, “I’m invincible.” I thought to myself that it was sort of a waste to fight someone invincible but Andrej quickly replied, “I can see invincible!”

One of the things we did was go to church services on Resurrection Sunday Why do we accept calling it Easter in English?  It is named after a fertility goddess.I posted before about Good Friday but I thought of another analogy.

Charles was relating to me how things have changed with banking in Kenya.  Because of check (or cheque) fraud the banks will not allow any stray marks on a check, even if they are countersigned.  But he also was happy to say that if you deposit a check, the money shows up 3 days later, it used to take weeks.

That is what I was thinking about on Good Friday.  Jesus, by living His perfect life, wrote the check to pay all your debt.  On Friday, on the cross, He deposited the check into your account, and on Sunday morning, the check cleared.

“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”

The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.  1 Corinthians 15:55-58 NKJV

Last year my friend Bob came to visit us in Africa.  Last night I picked up Charles Mungaithi at the airport for his visit to California. We stopped at In-n-Out on the way home.  We had some great double-doubles.

Today we are off to the Lakers game.

The end goal should be to get the best out of people.  How does one best go about that?

(Before I go on, I want to address what giving 100% means.  If 100% is the sustainable output, then often someone really could give 110% for a short while.  But that is an expression some math folks hate.)

No one gives 100%. From a corporate standpoint, one can always give more.  I have a responsibility to the organization for which I work to get the most out of the people working for me.  I also have a responsibility to them to help them be a good person.  Not often, but sometimes those two responsibilities are at odds.

As I have put some time into the review process, I realized there is no way to get it exactly right.  So you have to attack it from one direction or the other.  You can aim higher than the area where you think someone falls.  Give them the “good job” review, and hope they will pull themselves up to at least where you aimed.  You can also aim low and hope that sting motivates them to do better.

However, what it really got me thinking about is my review for my Real Employer. What kind of review would He give me for the last year?  Would it be above or below where I think it is?  There are things I can point to where by I can tell how I have been doing throughout the year.  But even if I could consolidate all those little things into some kind of report, it would be hard to know exactly how I have been doing.

He does give us a standard by which we are measured, and of course I have once again failed to measure up (even for just today).  I guess I am getting the “did not meet expectations” review… again.  I should be motivated to do better. At least I have great hope.

That is why it was so offensive for me to see Christ used as a political ploy.  At the National Prayer Breakfast, the President said the following:

But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God’s command to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs — from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato.

And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

I do not want to blame government for how messed up it is.  Josef Heller said, “In democracy you get the government you deserve. Alternately you deserve the government you got.”  Government that is, “of the people, by the people, and for the people” is an expression of the society in which it exists.

Society is broken. The Church is broken.  The separation of church and state was a great idea of the founding fathers.  However, the Church in the United States never took up its obligation for its responsibilities.  The countries in Europe where most of the American settlers came from had a state church.  That meant that the state, through the role of the church, had the responsibility to care for its body.  With the separation in the United States, no one took up this role.  Then, seeing the vacuum that had been created, certain men, maybe even with good intentions, lead the government into that void.

The President was quoting from the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10.  I would like you to read another quote about that Parable.

Dean Brown of Yale University has said that three classes of men that represent three philosophies of life are brought before us in this parable. First is the Thief: His philosophy of life says, “What you have is mine.” This is socialism or communism. The second is the Priest and Levite: His philosophy of life says, “What I have is mine.” This is rugged individualism that has gone to seed. His cry is, “Let the world be damned, I will get mine.” This is godless capitalism. Third is the Good Samaritan: His philosophy says, “What I have belongs to you.” This is a Christian philosophy of life. “What I have is yours if I can help you.”

It is a matter of the heart.  You can force people to do something, but that does nothing to change someone’s heart.  God is concerned about your heart, not what you do, but why you do it.

Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Not go and make your neighbor do likewise.

The Church has failed in caring for its own body.  That failure begins and ends with me.  What am I doing?  Why am I doing it?

One of my co-workers has been paying attention to my likes.

Part of the process of growing up is the widening of our scales.  When we are young, and I can see it in the boys, if something is not immediate, it is not right.  I want instant satisfaction.  As we grow older we (should) mature and be able to see farther down the road.

I work for two weeks, then I get paid.  For two weeks, I am working without any reward.  I do not mind that.  I know that at the end of the two weeks, I will be well rewarded for my work.  That is a two week width in my scales.

How much wider can we make them?  Here is a simple image that came to my mind to help communicate this idea.  Of course, it does not come close to really showing it, but it should give you and idea.

Your life is a blip on the radar of time,  nothing in relationship to eternity.  I am not a physicist, but I think a lever with an infinite length could provide quite a bit of force.  However, that is not how we usually see it.  We only look at one side of the scales.  We are only concerned with now.  Maturity is the ability to widen our perspective.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.  For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.  Romans 8:28-29 (NKJV)

How valuable is being conformed to the image of Christ?  What amount of sacrifice is that worth?

Petr had two playoff games on Saturday.  The early one they did not play at their best and came away with a draw.  The afternoon game they played way above themselves and won 3-2 over a great team.  After adding up the AYSO tournament scoring numbers, Petr’s team had made it to the Semifinals to be played Sunday morning.

This weekend also marked a record 7th time in the calendar year that Real Madrid met Barcelona.  Every time they meet it is known in Spain as “El Clasico.”  Real Madrid has had a bad run as of late, and Saturday showed their fortune has not changed, as they lost 3-1 at home.  Not the makings of a great weekend for me, a Real fan.

Sunday was a better day.  I was asked to teach the High School group at church because the youth pastor is on a missions trip to Uganda.  That went really well, but I did miss one of Petr’s soccer games in the morning.

They won the morning game which meant they were going to play in the AYSO East County Final.  Of all the teams from Alpine, Jamul, Lakeside, Santee, El Cajon and La Mesa it had come down to these two.

At around the 2 minute mark, they gave up a penalty on a handball inside the area.  The boy from the other team struck it hard and right into the net off a slight deflection from the keepers hands after a great dive.  Knowing that Petr’s team had been playing a bit above themselves for most of the tournament, I feared that would be a tough goal to overcome.  I was wrong!  Good coaching, great defending, awesome goalkeeping and constant passes forward left the other team exposed to the counter attack, time after time.  The game ended 5-1.  So Petr’s team is now the regional AYSO champion U10 team.

That is a great weekend.  (Now we get to go play in the Southern California tournament in February.)