CELEBRATION TIME!

Today, this morning, we on the North Coast are standing taller, holding our heads up, walking with more spring in our step, and bursting with pride and disbelief. No longer are we "the mistake on the Lake"mere fly-over country. We are champions! Finally, after 52 years, the Cleveland Cavaliers have won the NBA Championship! We have won a major sport championship! 
   Although, NE Ohio has walked down this road many times before - this time it's for real!
  Watching the crowd in downtown Cleveland last night, like a mini- Times Square on New Year's Eve - folks were just milling around. It was as though we didn't know what to do - because we
actually won!!!!
   After the bitter betrayal of LeBron James when he left for the Miami Heat - he was so hungry for
an NBA win - and the burning of his jerseys, when LeBron tasted that victory - he wanted to bring
that home. And being the good-hearted Midwesterners that we are - we welcomed him home and
forgive him the great hurt he caused this area. And we got so close, we could almost taste victory - but as always - snatched away from us, or we choked and couldn't get it done. But last night, we did.
We got it done. And there was no victory more exquisite for LeBron than winning the NBA Championship for his home team and home town! Not even the win while part of the Miami Heat
could ever compare to the win last night.
   And historic it was! No team in NBA history after came back from 3 losses to win the whole enchilada!
   How incredible it was for the underdog to pull it off and finally, finally, win!
  This is big for Cleveland, for NE Ohio! It is a shot in the arm. A trophy hard won. We are on the map! We are Cleveland!
   Make no mistake, in the grand and ultimate scheme of things, it is still just a basketball game. There are far larger and ultimate things of which to be concerned in God's good world. But for now,
for this moment in time, we bask in the glow of sweet victory, we taste what hasn't been savored
in 52 years. And it is wonderful! It should have been declared a state holiday with everything
closed so that we could experience what a win is and means!!!!
    I hope that this will bring good things to this area of the country. That Cleveland can look
ahead to a bright shining future, no longer slumped over, apologetic for making their home
here. May NE Ohioans realize that victory and winning is possible. Hard work and perserverance
in the face of naysayers can culminate in a win!
    Today, we celebrate!
    And although, God is more concerned about greater things than a mere basketball game -
championship or otherwise - I think, that there is delight - in the against all odds, in the little
guy triumphing - that pleases God!
    We are Cleveland! We are Cleveland - at least for this one brief shining moment!

TRULY HORRIFIC

I ponder these horrific events in our world. It greatly saddens me what one human being can do to another. What legion of demons has engulfed this one, to do such an atrocity?
I have no answers, only grief for a lost soul, and all those sunk in grief for a loved one gone from
their lives. I pray for the survivors, for healing, for the grief-stricken, for comfort, for God to make God's presence sensed and known, to hold all in God's love, to bring some measure of peace to a senseless act as they all are.
  And I sit with this all, a heavy heart within. And I listen in the silence, in the aftermath, for God's
voice in the shattered stillness, in the most broken of hearts. Speak, Lord. We are listening...