James and Journey

The facts:

1.) I love the NBA.

2.) The Dallas Mavericks are my homeboys.

3.) The Heat is Dallas' biggest rival.

So about 9 days ago, why did I find myself starting to root for the Miami Heat during the 2012 NBA finals? Why wasn't my whole being pulling for the upstart Thunder, even though they swept the beloved Mavericks this year? Why wasn't I turned off by the Heat and LeBron's arrogant actions in the past?

One answer: journey.

That's why part of me was pulling for the Heat. Their story is our story.

LeBron, D-Wade, and the Boshosaur are human. They made a few mistakes. The decision. The pre-season celebration. The complacency based on the assumption that they were unstoppable. The isolation basketball.

Then the loss to the Mavericks happened (remember Dirk singing "We are the Champions"?).

According to every Miami Heat player, that Finals loss humiliated them. Ironically, that was exactly what needed to happen to the Miami Heat.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

All the talk was that Miami was a completely different team. Isolation basketball was no longer part of their offense.  Every single NBA analyst noticed it. The bench that was once criticized for not being deep exploded in the most important games. The whole team caught fire and blew the hot Oklahoma City Thunder out in five games.

So why is this all so captivating? Once again: it's the adventurous journey that makes up the story of our lives. You know the story: something happens and we feel like we're on top of the world. However, we become arrogant and forget about other people.

We play isolation basketball.

But that just doesn't work. Ask Carmelo Anthony. Sooner or later, life gives us a sucker punch.

Right in the face.

It humbles us, makes us realize what our real goals are. It gives us sight, the kind of sight that LeBron showed through his face the entire playoffs. We have the sober look of focus, determination, and fear. Fear that looking to the left or right will lead to failure.

When we are sober, don't take things for granted, and accept responsibility, things happen. Little victories lead to greater ones. They lead to greater joy, and joy that happens as part of the journey. Dwayne Wade said that going through the failure against the Mavs was a necessary event in the life of his team. They had to go through pain and suffering in order to get to their point of victory.

So yes, I was happy for LeBron to finally win one. I resonated with the whole NBA finals in these lessons about the core of our lives, truth that resonates down to our very soul.

Keep your eyes on the Prize. Don't look to the left or right. Stay sober. There are things so valuable that they need all of your strength.  Even strength in the midst of failure.

Days 3-4: Grandeur, Geology, and the Grand Canyon

Well, it took me a lot longer to post this than I had hoped, I apologize for those of you who were waiting earnestly for me to post again.

After our visit to the painted desert and petrified forest, we made our way to Bryce Canyon.  This was originally meant to be simply a travel day, but we made two impromptu stops (I might add, the best kinds).
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Our first stop was at Sunset Crater, the site of a dormant volcano and lava flow.  This was one of the coolest things for me.  As a kid, me and my brother watched tons of National Geographic earthquake and volcano videos.  To see this stuff in real life was really, really cool.  The lava flow above was a result of the volcano below, of which you can see the crater.

There were several other interesting sights in this park showing geological processes, including some geological buckling of the lava flow, as you can see to the right.

Note: just seeing these pictures on the internet does not do justice to the actual sight.  Every single sight captured in these photos, in one way or another, was breathtaking in real life.

After our stop at Sunset Crater, we also passed the Glen Canyon dam.  This dam is along the Colorado River, the same one that passes through and carves the Grand Canyon.  It is north of the Grand Canyon, and provides some spectacular desert views.

Apart from the breathtaking landscape, the Glen Canyon Dam is certainly an engineering marvel.  As someone who is studying Civil Engineering, I found the dam to be a marvelous sight.

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After making these two stops, we continued our journey north into Bryce Canyon in Utah, our first major stop.  Bryce Canyon is known for its signature red rocks, which make beautiful structures known as hoodoos.  These hoodoos make Bryce Canyon a very interesting visit.

Bryce Canyon is known for several landmarks in particular.  The first of these is Thor's Hammer, as you can see below.  You may have seen this momentous rock in pictures at one time or another.

Another cool sight in Bryce Canyon is this arch, which is created by many years of erosion.
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While spending our day in Bryce Canyon, we hiked in the morning and visited several overlooks in the afternoon.  Talk about eye candy: these sights were amazing.  The hoodoo lined horizon was quite captivating; more so than could ever be taken with a picture.  Under normal conditions, I am not a huge hiking fan (or Viking fan for that matter).  However, due to the amazing views, this was the best hiking I had ever experienced.

When looking over the red and pink rocks, one notices something very interesting: along the top of every hoodoo, there is a layer of white rock that runs across every hoodoo at approximately the same elevation everywhere.  This layer of white rock is called dolomite.  It has special minerals inside of it that make it more resistant to erosion than the red rock underneath.  Because of this, it acts as a 'hard hat' to the hoodoo.  You can see the top white rocks below.

As rain and snow slowly erode at the rock, waves begin to emerge as the layers of harder rock protrude beyond the softer rock.  Eventually, a layer of soft rock will completely erode, leaving the rocks above it to topple over, including the dolomite.  From there, without a dolomite 'hard hat', the hoodoo will erode and disappear fairly quickly.
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OK, it's book time.

I mentioned in my last post that each of these three books had one unifying theme, and that was Christianity as a lifestyle instead of simply a collection of religious beliefs.  To be more specific, I would say that each of these three books develop this Biblical theme: faith without works is dead.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Cost of Discipleship, develops this theme with a distinction between cheap grace and costly grace.  Bonhoeffer notes that churches often promote cheap grace.  This type of grace, when accepted, does not have any bearing on one's actions in life.  This cheap grace is commonly promoted as fire insurance and a 'get out of hell free' card.  Or it may be promoted as a way to achieve all of your financial or emotional goals.  Most of all, it says that you have a chance to go to heaven while only having to go to a special building on Sunday for a couple hours a week!  How easy?  Who wouldn't buy into this idea?

However, according to Bonhoeffer, grace is informed by 1 Corinthians 9:16: "you were bought at a price".  The fact is, our renewed relationship with God cost a great deal to God, including the death of his own son.   Do we really grasp that?  You know that means?  It is going to cost you a lot.  There is a lot at stake.  This deal is pretty pricey.

But you get what you pay for.

And more.

When grace is seen in this Biblical way, it becomes more than a doctrine.  It becomes a way of life, an all-encompassing motivation based on a real life event in history.  It's a grace that demands our full attention because of its momentous impact.  Additionally, Bonhoeffer notes, the wonderful part about this grace is that it gives us the grace to serve Jesus, instead of the unfulfilling idols of fame, and money.  Even the grace is gracious.

Amazing, grandeurous, grace.

Day 1-2: Grandeur, Geology, and the Grand Canyon

Our family trip to the Grand Canyon began with a ten-hour ride through the flat lands of Texas.  For those of you who know the landscape of Texas, this is not a very exciting drive, at least until you get close to New Mexico.  By the time we arrived in New Mexico, I was already excited, even ecstatic, at the change in scenery.  It was as if we suddenly entered a land inhabited by gigantic burrowing creatures.


OK, maybe I exaggerated a little bit, but it was seriously a welcome break from the incredibly monotonous geography of Texas.  The first campsite that we stopped at was set next to a lake in the middle of a desert.  It was a pretty cool landscape.  Of course, this was only a night stop in the beginning of our trip, but there was one nice thing about this campsite: we had electricity.  :)

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The focus of our second day was the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest.  All of our sights for that day were located in Petrified Forest National Park in Eastern Arizona. 

The painted desert gets its name from the appearance of the rocks in what is called the Chinle Formation.  The rock varies from red to white and every color in between.  The layers differentiate because of past volcanic eruptions, which provide the white volcanic ash in between the red siltstone and shale.  All of these layers erode fairly easily, forming what is called the badlands topography.  The combination of these factors creates this beautiful landscape.

The south end of the National Park contains the majority of the petrified wood.  These old colorful trees are scattered throughout the landscape at many different places.  In order for wood to crystallize and petrify, it needs a high concentration of Silica, which is contained in the layers of volcanic ash.  Once again, the petrified wood was a really cool sight to see.

This was when I really started to get into all of the science, which I found fascinating.  During pretty much every stop, I was the one reading every board and ogling over all of the amazing sights.

After stopping here, we traveled a few hours to our second campsite.  And as I laid my head down to sleep, I got to look at all of the stars out of my window.  I could actually see stars.  Thousands of them, actually.

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During the trip, I read several books at the same time (a daunting task, I know).  The three books I read were The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, and Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology by Eugene Peterson.  I only got about halfway through each of these books, but so far, each of these books has been phenomenal.  Bonhoeffer was a new author for me; one of my Bible professors introduced him to me in a Bible class last semester.  I had read Rob Bell before, but decided to reread his most popular book once more.  In the fall of 2011, I had read a book by Eugene Peterson, and really enjoyed it, so I decided to read another book of his.

Throughout the rest of my blog posts, I will tell you a little bit about each of the books I read.  Before I do that though, I need to tell you about a common thread through all of them that surprised me.  Each of these authors, in their own contexts, are not satisfied with Christianity as simply a system of beliefs.  Sure, they value belief and doctrine, but according them, the doctrine found in scripture is meant to shape and guide our lives.  In other words, faith without works is dead.  Belief and obedience go hand in hand.  Christianity should lead us to a revolutionary and transforming way of life.  As I read these authors simultaneously, I found this truth quite refreshing. 

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So now, time for a little geology lesson.  I thought this stuff was fascinating, and I hope to explain it as simply as possible.  The reason why there are all of these cool things in Arizona and Utah is because of the Colorado Plateau.  Sometime in the past, this vast region of land was uplifted due to plate tectonics.  It is partially because of this that there are so many natural wonders in this region.

In this region, many rock layers are exposed in different parts of the region due to erosion and other natural forces.  As I continue in my account, you will recognize different layers depending on the elevation we are in.  For this first stop in the painted desert, we were in the Chinle formation, which you can see here in the many layers of the grand staircase.