Chris's Musings

This weekend, I once again PR'd (Personal Record for those that don't talk "runner" :-) ) another half marathon... saving a little over a minute off my previous PR in Savannah. Time:  drumroll please... 2:15:04! I love that.  It made me happy to say "PR" - I won't lie. This was really a great event... the final concert was a great touch and Nashville is always a great city to visit.  We all had a fantastic time. Of course, I did have a couple of musings from the race, other than "Hey, check me out... I got a PR" (even though I'm still happy about that) ---------- At mile 10, one of the bands playing was the worship band from the Belmont Baptist Church, which I really loved.  They were playing some great songs too... stuff you'd hear at NorthPoint during our Sunday times.  I was happy to see them play and witness like they did.  Note to the guy with the bullhorn at the Dogwood Festival... take notes from these guys and just...

In 2 days and 1 morning, I will be making my way to Nashville for my third half marathon. Seems crazy, doesn't it?  It was only less than 3 years ago that I thought my running career may be over.  But praise God it is not.  In fact, I have two race metals from previous Rock-n-Roll events, and I'll be going after a third at the Country Music 1/2 this weekend.   But there's been one catch.   A week and a half ago, I started to develop some tightness in my right leg.  The kind of tightness, as I found, that is pulling on my knee and making running a pain.  Not fun.  As a result, I scheduled a couple of appointments with the incredible sports massage therapist that helped me recover from my achilles tendonitis injury last Fall.  This miracle worker, Sara (who works with players from the Hawks and Falcons) is freakin' incredible and knows how to get these things worked out. So today after work I was on the table and "the spot" (tha...

"When you are well prepared for your sermon, you cite a variety of sources, but when you aren't well prepared, you just quote CS Lewis."  The above quotation was something that I read in the Tim Keller book I am currently reading.  It was something that a guy that regularly listened to him preach observed about him.  When he explained "why this is so," Tim recalls that when he was first saved he really poured over a lot of CS Lewis's books, essays, and letters to the point that he was so familiar with Lewis that whenever impromptu situations arose, something of Lewis's thoughts, sayings, or philosophy would just naturally come out.  It was in fact, a default. And then he tied it to something that really caught me. What if that was true of us and Jesus? Do we know Jesus, what he would say, do, react... this intimately that when life throws us a curveball that what comes out of our lives just looks like Jesus?  When we are squeezed, or when we don...

About a month ago, my groups director introduced a group of us community group leaders to a tool, called "lifemaps", that we are using to tell our life story within our community groups.  I'll admit, I freaked out a little when I first saw it because this was a.) much more homework than just spilling my regular testimony to a group, and b.) required me to think about how things impacted me (and then go communicate it). But since then, I have shared mine with my new community group and we are using lifemaps to share our stories with one another.  After telling mine, and hearing a couple more stories (both in my mentor group where I've yet to go and in my community group where I led by being the guinea pig) I am a huge proponent of lifemaps.  For two reasons: 1.) It really gets us thinking about what life events shaped us, and allows us to make sense of some of the things that we may see as just "randomness."  At the end of the day, you look back at your l...