August 06, 2007Off topic

In the next couple of days, I plan to gather my thoughts and write something about Bob Bixby's "Emerging Middle" proposal.

In the meantime, I'll point your attention to something unrelated to normal themes of this blog. (The themes, just in case you're scoring at home, are typically fundamentalism, theology, and oddball humor.) I stumbled upon an interesting article today about the soon-be-be home run king, Barry Bonds. It is beyond reasonable doubt that Bonds cheated to obtain this record, but this particular article advances a different take on the whole "Barry cheated" theme. Rather than rehashing the steroid accusations, Michael Witte suggests that the ginormous elbow brace that Bonds wears actually provides mechanical assistance to his swing. Before you think that this is all crazy conspiracy theory stuff, he's not saying that the elbow brace is spring-loaded or hydraulically-powered or any other such nonsense. Rather, he advances the entirely plausible notion that the hinge of the brace actually helps Bonds maintain a more consistent swing plane.

I don't know that I buy everything he's saying here (especially the idea that the brace has added 75-100 home runs to Bonds's total), but I think he's made an interesting point that merits some attention.

Michael Riley | four comments | Link

August 02, 2007An audio sermon

Earlier this summer, I was given the opportunity to preach a Sunday evening service here at Tri-City Baptist Church. For those of us who have infrequent opportunities to preach, an invitation to the pulpit presents the difficult challenge of picking a topic or passage with the right scope for a single sermon; the temptation, at least for me, is to be too ambitious, to try to say everything that needs to be preached for the next year (until I might get asked to preach again). Hopefully I avoided that pitfall.

I preached Revelation 5. I found the chapter to be somewhat challenging homiletically; I felt I'd be failing to properly exegete the passage if I didn't spend at least some time explaining my understanding of the identity of the elders and the living creatures around the throne. At the same time, I felt that all the time I spent in those details was taking away from the heart of the passage, which is the ever-increasing praise to the worthiness of the Lamb for taking the scroll and breaking the seals.

My goal in this sermon was to help our congregation feel how John must have felt as he observed the indescribably majestic angelic beings and all creation explode in worship of the Lamb.

I entitled the sermon Worship That Our Lord Recognizes.

Michael Riley | two comments | Link