MONDAY MORNING REFLECTIONS - MAGIC NUMBERS, NOTHING ON TV, KIDS ON FIRE FOR JESUS AND MORE

Late Friday evening I paused and turned on the television to ESPN. The ESPN Bottom Line was carrying an item called "Pennant Races", highlighting the teams still in the pennant races of their league and identifying the magic number that would eliminate them or clinch a place in the playoffs.  I always thought "magic number" was a misnomer.  There's nothing magic about it.  It describes a mathematical certainty. Based on a fixed number of 162 games in a season and how far a team may be ahead or behind, if the team in front of them gets a certain number of wins and they get a certain number of losses combined, they cannot get into the playoffs because there is no 163rd game (unless, of course, as the Twins and the Tigers can tell you, two teams end those 162 games in a dead tie).  With a sweep of the Braves this past week, I would be betting on the Phillies to be one of the four playoff teams (except I'm not a betting man--I have easier ways to achieve poverty). By the way, at this point I really think my four projections for the American League will stand - Twins, Yankees, Rangers and Rays.  I suspect, however, the Rockies might not be the wild card team in the NL. I think now the Padres will join the Phillies, Reds, and Giants in the NL Playoffs.

The television season (the new fall season as opposed to the new summer season as opposed to ...) began this past week and Dianne rejoiced as her favorite shows NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, Bones, Grey's Anatomy, The Mentalist joined Rizzoli and Isles and The Closer.  The problem for her is that most of these shows occur on three evenings and so there are several nights, particularly the weekends, when she has to say "there's nothing on television."  I can satisfy myself with the never-ending baseball season and college football that now airs prime time three nights a week.  But if I want to spend time with my wife, I have to settle for NCIS reruns or the Hallmark Channel on those nights when her favorites are chased away by reality shows, NASCAR, and all manner of baseball games.  Too bad the television industry, both broadcast and cable, haven't figured out that they'd all have more viewers if they managed not to schedule so many great shows on top of each other.

Jeremy Moyer speaks to the kids of BURN

My church has a powerful student ministry called BURN.  It is aptly named. Since late August, as it began its second year, the kids seemed to connect with God in a powerful way. First there was a lock-in with a great new movie called To Save a Life.  Then there were the challenges to step it up for God and become people who "save a life" among their high school friends. They looked at their own needs but also their gifts and saw how they could give something to their community that was desperately needed. And now they are dreaminf dreams, "What if God is who He really claims to be" and "what if you really let God work through you" and "what if you began to pray for your friends".  These more than 100 kids are coming alive. They are kids on fire. I didn't say fanatics but young people passion about God and passionate about God's love (did I tell you there were only twelve of them a year ago?) our church and our school and our community is beginning to feel the heat - good heat that warms our lives and light that points the way. I rejoice for the Burn student ministry at the Church of God of Landisville.

Scott Zimmerman leads worship at BURN

Blogger tells me that one of my most popular posts this year was one I wrote on March 29, 2010 called "Fantasy Baseball." For those of you who are curious, only one of my five teams made it to the playoffs (the other finished 4th or worse in the their five-team divisions.)  The best team was called Steve's Stars. Its 17-7 regular season record made it the champs of the East Division of its MLB Fantasy League and number one seed in the playoffs. I eliminated the no. 4 seed Cracker Jack Jingle (15-9, second in the West Division) in the semi-final round 226-121, Next up, Dominican Pride, which at 15-9 finished two games behind Steve's Stars in the East Division during the regular season.  Again for the curious, my pitching staff was the Phillies and my top producing players were: Martin Prado (Braves) Ryan Braun and Cory Hart (Brewers) Troy Tulowiski (Rockies) Billy Butler (Royals) Bbby Abreu (Angels). Magglio Ordonez (Tigers) was doing a great job for me until he went on the DL and had season ending surgery. This was the second year in a row that my wining team had Prado, Tulowiski and Abreu. Last year my pitching staff on the winner was the Tigers.