Füßball. (Spoiler??)

England 1:2 Deutschland

Great match! Although both goal scorers hail from Schalke, it was a great game to win. Pander's strike from 25 yards was unbelivable. My wife and I both screamed out loud and woke the kids when we saw the shot.

Sweden 1:0 USA

Not such a great match. Good to see a great US squad back together after taking a weakened side to the Copa America to receive a sound thrashing. This was back to Gold Cup strength...

Brazil ?:? Algeria

Recorded this one - we're watching it tonight. Always delightful to watch the Samba Boys. The beautiful game at it's finest. I'm going to say Brazil wins this one, but don't anyone spoil it for me...

Vision.

I have awful vision. Ever heard of perfect 20/20 vision? Mine’s 20/400ish… I can see clearly up to about six inches without corrective lenses. I’ve worn glasses or contacts since the fourth grade. One night, in the tenth grade, I fell asleep in my contact lenses. Ever done that? There were no extended wear lenses then. They said not to sleep in them or they would dry out, stick to your eyeball and you’d have to have them removed professionally.

The contacts, not your eyeballs.

When I woke up in the morning, I blinked and everything was really fuzzy for a moment. I rubbed my eyes and the fuzziness cleared. I could see! I literally shouted out for my mom to tell her the good news! I’d been healed overnight! Not quite. I quickly realized that my eyes felt extremely dry and I spent the next ten minutes trying to get my contact lenses out…

We’ve got fuzzy vision. And we have trouble seeing the difference between a mistake and a miracle sometimes.

We like to have things neatly packaged, don't we? We like to have control. We like to avoid any possible mess. But, if your life is like mine... isn't it true that sometimes something that looks like a horrendous mess becomes a massive blessing?

Apparently my money is no good here...

The rest of the office is going in on pizza this afternoon and someone asked if I wanted to get in on it. Rummaging through my backpack, I managed to scrounge up a €1 coin, two £1 coins and 32 pence from my last trip across the Atlantic. So, I've got the equivalent of about $6 in hand, but they say my money's no good here. I did find 52¢, though - maybe I can grab half a slice along with the crew!

Still learning.

Among other things, Myron is a learner. Yesterday he challenged our entire team to answer the question: "What are you going to learn in the next year?" He got us out of our church-box mentality and encouraged us to think way beyond what we do in ministry. I couldn't narrow it down to one thing - and one of my answers still might be put in some people's church-box...

1) Process the 4 volumes and 2,000 pages of Christopher Alexander's magnum-opus, The Nature of Order. It's about wholeness and order in Architecture, but is metaphor for all of life - relationships, music, art, and more.

2) Finish War and Peace. I actually read 2/3 of it before stumbling onto a Dumas book I had never heard of. Those who recall my extreme appreciation for Dumas' work will understand - It preempted Tolstoy and I never got back to finish the last 1/3.

3) Read scripture through the lens of getting to know Jesus. It's unbelievably difficult to set information and knowledge to the side and prioritize knowing God better by encountering Him in the Text.

I've been captured.

Cheers to TDurbs for the impromptu photo session. Here's the photo I keep going back to from his collection... arrested my attention and defined his skills for me. Thanks brother.

One-two punch.

Talking with TDurbs today - I wonder - what's the best one-two punch in music history? To qualify for this category, two songs must be right next to one another in the play order on the album on which they released... Here are a few candidates that would receive my vote:

Hanging by a Thread and Should've Known Better by Nickel Creek on This Side

Where the Streets Have No Name and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2 on Joshua Tree

What other candidates do we have out there?

7 hours afterward...

Hey. I found it. After only seven hours, a cup of Heine Brothers Ronda's Blend chased by a demi-tasse of Starbuck's Rift Valley Blend, I finally found the wonder again. It was in John 20:17. Do you see it, too?

Where did the wonder go?

I'm tired. I walked out of the house this morning without having a cup of coffee. And now I sit and sip as I read the Text. Things are still a bit hazy as I'm waking up... I have my Bible open in front of me, I'm reading about the resurrection, and I'm very aware of a lack of wonder in me. Have I become so well acquainted with it over the years that it is no longer shocking? Am I just tired at the moment? A combination of the two?

Maybe my real question is this: Is it a good thing to get comfortable with the miraculous?