Say It Ain't So, Joe

I think Albert Pujols' 9th-inning home run against the Astros last night is still traveling down Texas Ave--it might be in San Antonio by now. Have you ever seen a ball more perfectly and purely hit? By the way, Astros: WALK PUJOLS. He's the best hitter in baseball and if you hang a slider in the middle of the zone, he's gonna crush it!...But I guess we ALL know that now.

Brad Lidge said that you don't walk a guy and put the tying run on second base, even if it is Babe Ruth. Okay. Whatever! I wish it were Babe Ruth...he's dead! Don't you remember a few years ago when Bobby Valentine's Mets walked Barry Bonds when the bases were loaded? The Mets had a 3 run lead and figured a two run lead was better than letting Barry swing with three men on base. Smart thinking.

The series goes back to St. Louis and Busch Stadium. It's gonna be great. I predict the 'Stros will pull it out and be headed to their first World Series. After that all bets are off. The White Sox had a great season and may be a team of destiny. Remember: the White Sox have thrown a World Series more recently than they've won one. Fate may be on their side. Or, the Black Sox scandal may forever jinx them from winning the series. Either way, before the Series begins, go check out one of my all time favorite movies, Eight Men Out.

I Can't Lose!

Ahh! October. Some argue that October is the best month of the sports year. They have good case. Basketball is about to get started, college and professional football will are in full swing and the Major League Baseball playoffs have begun.

Last night, Rochelle was asking me to catch her up on the past 5 months of baseball. She doesn't really pay attention until the playoffs, but as the post-season goes deeper, she will stay up late into the night, living and dying with every pitch or hit of whichever team she choose to cheer for in the next few days.

Here is Houston, my hometown Astros and 1 game up on my former hometown Braves. I live in Houston and follow the team all year, but I've been a Braves fan from the crib--thanks to TBS, The Super-Station. People frequently ask me who I'm pulling for. My response: "I can't lose!" Though between the two of us, my heart is still in Atlanta.

Clean Hands Part II

I told you so, I told you so! There it was in the New York Times, which arrives with precision in my e-mail inbox every morning. The headline: Hand Washing Habits Not in Sync with Answers.

The article tells in statistics what I already knew in my heart: "Most people say they wash their hands after using the bathroom. But a study suggests they don't." A Harris Interactive poll asked 1,013 adults about hand-washing and then the researchers sent observers into public restrooms to see what actually happened. 91% of adults said they washed their hands after using a public restroom, but observers say only 82% actually did.

Women washed their hands to a tune of 90%, but only 75% of men washed. That means that the nest time you go to church or the office or a party 1 out of 4 men who shake your hand has not washed them after...well, you know. And I suspect, if you are like me you know EXACTLY who that fourth guy is!

But there I go again, focusing on the physical dirt of others rather than the spiritual dirt of my own. Do you ever do that?

Clean Hands

Does it bother anybody else that we live in a world where employees have to be told to wash their hands before returning to work? I mean, come on. If you go to the bathroom, wash your hands! Don't we all know that? As a matter of fact, I have noticed that some restaurants have taken the hand-washing instructions to a deeper level and have posted "how-to" instructions in the restroom.

How-To instructions!? Don't most of us wash our hands and don't most of us know how?

Probably not.

I say that because I frequently go to the restroom and see people walk out without washing their hands. You would think that even if folks didn't usually wash up after a trip to the toilet, they might succumb to peer pressure and strange looks in the men's room and wash...but they don't. Recently, I saw a man in the restroom at church. He did his business, straightend his pants around his waist, hitched-up his trousers, looked in the mirror and walked out. No wash!

You've guessed it: I haven't shaken his hand since!

But I suppose that I should slow down my criticism about non-hand-washers. I should be the last person to talk about being dirty and not knowing it. For the last few weeks I've been reading and re-reading the book of Isaiah. It's an amazing story--both in Isaiah's immediate context and the prophecies about the coming suffering-servant.

Isaiah chapter 6 has continued to leap of the page at me. It's where Isaiah receives his call and commission to serve God. Isaiah, like me and those guys who don't wash their hands after they go, is dirty and doesn't know it. Well, he discovers it when he is given a hems-glimpse of God and he is forever changed. The prophet exclaims, "Woe to me! I am lost, for I am a man of unlcean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of host."

Wow! When Isaiah sees God, he realizes that he has forgotten to wash up. He had been--like so many of us--going about his busy day, doing his thing, but then God steps in, calls him out and says "go to work, but first, you gotta get clean." Next in the story, a seraph flies to the prophet touches his lip with a live coal and Isaiah's guilt departs and his sins are blotted out.

I suppose there is something of authenticity in Isaiah's call. Not the kind of authenticity that says, "I'll be different just to be different and call myself authentic," but rather an authenticity that realizes who we are and who God is. It's an authenticity that acknowledges that we are the desperate ones, we are the sinful ones, we are the ones with dirty hands--hands that had other people realized where they had been, no one would ever shake them--we are stained, we are tainted.

The restroom may be a strange place for theology, but now every time I see someone walk out without washing, I think to myself, "You know Sean, you're dirty too."