Sterling Griggs

I was shopping for some dodge balls at the local Sports Authority store tonight when I ran into what I believe was an incredible deal. First let me say that I was going to shop at the new Dick's Sporting Goods store which has the most unbelievable selection of everything sports you can imagine, but I am a loyal guy and I have always checked out Sports Authority first, so tonight would be no different. There is line of New Balance running shoes, the 900 series, that I have been checking out for a long time but the price tag is way too high. I have tried to justify just buying a pair but as I age I find that I am actually more responsible that I realize so I have fought off the voice in my head that wants me to be impulsive. That is, until tonight. As I made my way to the back of the story I purposefully swung by the shoe aisles so that I could gaze at the objects of my affection. I noticed that a salesperson was talking to a customer about the New Balance 992, the luxury sedan o...

Me and Kellie and the girls are at Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina this week with some good friends of ours. This is Deacon's first real trip to the beach and so far he's been having a blast. Chandler and Reynolds are regular pros. As for me and Kellie, we are content to just sit in the sand, walk on the beach, feel the sea breeze all around us, and watch our kids. Life doesn't get much better than this.

I've been reading Erwin McManus' new book Soul Cravings and I ran across an entry that really moved me. The entry is #9 in the "Destiny" section and it's called "Oxygen for the Soul." McManus is writing about hope, and that without it there is no real reason to live. Without hope all we have is despair. When we have hope it's not because we are certain of the future but rather because we see the future as filled with promise. His next paragraph is what I like best: "Like the promise of a future, hope comes only from something we do not yet have, something we have not yet attained. In other words, how much you have in the world has no bearing on how much hope you have. In actuality, everything you have no longer qualifies as a conduit of hope. Once you have it, it's out of the arena of hope." Jesus is my hope, not because I don't yet know Him - I do - but He's my hope because of the future that I will have with Him. Beca...

The following conversation was printed in the February 2007 edition of the National Geographic Magazine . I know it's really long but it's really a very good read. The often strained relationship between science and religion has become particularly combative lately. In one corner we have scientists such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker who view religion as a relic of our superstitious, prescientific past that humanity should abandon. In the other corner are religious believers who charge that science is morally nihilistic and inadequate for understanding the wonders of existence. Into this breach steps Francis Collins, who offers himself as proof that science and religion can be reconciled. As leader of the Human Genome Project, Collins is among the world's most important scientists, the head of a multibillion-dollar research program aimed at understanding human nature and healing our innate disorders. And yet in his best-selling book, The Language of God , he recounts...

This evening I turned on the Windows media player on my computer as I putted around the house and played with my kids. As I browsed through the many CD's that I have ripped, I came across a couple of them that really took me back. The first was from a band called Elijah's Cry . They are now called Midday but when I first heard them and got their CD they were still Elijah's Cry. I first heard them on a Frontliners mission trip to Kansas City in the summer of 2004. They were the band for the week and they simply brought it. They aren't big - you probably have never heard of them - but they were a bunch of college-age guys who were committed to honoring the Lord and producing music that did the same. The other band is called Broken Vessels , and they were the band at a Frontliners mission trip that my church helped host in the summer of 2005. These guys were quiet by nature, but in the short amount of time that I spent with them I grew to love them. They also were...

Just recently diabetes in 13 adult patients was treated - and cured - by using stem cells. Admittedly, when I read the title to that article ( click here to read it ) I thought to myself, "My goodness, they finally got embryonic stem cells to work." But it didnt' take long for me to learn that it wasn't embryonic stem cells that did the curing. In fact, this study pushed the notion that embryonic stem cells may not be as critical as many in the medical community believe they really are. So what did cure these patients? It was their own adult stem cells which were coaxed into performing new functions. No need to go to battle over whether or not embryo's that are frozen can be used in research. In this case, a "miracle" happened, one that the researchers never saw coming because they can't see the forest for the trees. Someone asked me today what I would choose to do with those existing embryos that are just sitting there. My response was that...

With Easter only a few days away, it's only appropriate to sift around Easter eggs, bunnies, and other completely "un-Easterish" things to discuss what the message of Easter truly is. I was delighted to hear my kindergarten-age daughter tell me in great detail that Easter is all about the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus (although she still confessed to really liking all the candy that comes with the Easter season). But let me cut to the chase and say this about Easter: Christianity itself stands and falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are countless theories abounding as to what really happened to the body of Jesus. James Cameron recently claimed that he found evidence of the bones of Jesus, and if that is the case then there is no resurrection. The "Gnostic Gospels" as they are called debunk the idea that Jesus really rose from the grave physically but claim that instead it was a spiritual resurrection. They believe that all matter,...