Sterling Griggs

This is what a broken and dislocated forearm on a 9-year-old girls looks like. Unfortunately this belongs to my youngest daughter, Emme, who accomplished this after trying to catch herself from hitting the floor after falling off the balance beam at gymnastics. Accidents happen - and sometimes they really hurt! - but sometimes they affect more than just your physical well-being. If you watch sports or have a child who plays sports or were an athlete yourself, then you know that injuries are often part of the game. Not everyone experiences bone-crushing fractures or career-ending injuries - most of the time it's knocks and bumps and the occasional bruise. But there are those moments where you watch an athlete's future dissipate before his or her eyes by an injury that prohibits them from coming back. And that is hard to watch. As someone who has never really experienced any of this in the athletic arena, I've often wondered what it's like to receive the crushing...

Several weeks ago I ran across an article that described the kind of person that I am to the letter. The writer described a group of people that he referred to as "introverted extroverts," those who are outgoing and not shy about being in the public eye yet are just as comfortable being alone with a book or sitting in a quiet place.  If you know me, then you know how much I love to talk and be with people, but it might surprise you just how much alone time I prefer (and need). In spite of my hidden extrovertedness, I realize that life is not meant to be lived alone. We were made for relationships, first with God and then each other. Consider God's words to us in the Old Testament book of Genesis: So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female. (Genesis 1:27) Then the Lord God said, "It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper as his compliment." (Genesis 2:18) So the Lord God called...

This summer has been a bit of a whirlwind for me and my family. As soon as school let out in June I took my son to soccer camp for a week. When we returned, I had two days to prepare to preach my last sermons at the church I was serving before we packed up all of our belongings and moved to Wilmington, NC. Almost immediately we had family in town all the while trying to adjust to a new environment. From there it was youth camps, another soccer camp, registering our children for their new schools, enrolling our youngest in a new gymnastics program, celebrating a sweet sixteen birthday and then going to get her license, and then serving as the speaker at a week-long high school camp. Somewhere in the midst of all of that my wife and I carved out regular time for each other so that we wouldn't be tempted to wake up one day and ask each other, " Who are you? " Time itself is such a funny thing - we can't actually create any more than we are given in a 24-hour day but ...