Lessons from the Newspaper

I started reading the newspaper when I was seven years old.  The comics and sports pages were my favorites. I would study and analyze the box scores of every major league baseball game.  There was a time when I could quote you the regular starting line-up for every National League team, and I knew the entire roster of my beloved Braves.

            My favorite time for reading the newspaper was from the Spring of 1975 until the Spring of 1977. The Gwinnet Daily News (no longer in existence) covered sports for all ten high schools in our county. I played basketball and baseball for the Dacula Falcons.  In the Winter of 1977 our basketball team busted into polls, reaching the number 1 spot for two weeks before losing our first game of the season. We won the region title and made it to the quarterfinals of the state tournament, losing to eventual champion, Greater Atlanta Christian.

            It was heady stuff to see your name and picture on the front pages of the sports section.  I read every article (several times no doubt), and then waited for Dad to come home. After he had read it I would carefully cut them out and put them in my scrapbook, still one of my most precious possessions to this day. 

            As I think about newspapers and my old scrapbooks, I learn valuable lessons. The most important is that I can’t live in the past. Paul said it this way, “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  That applies to me in two ways.

            First, I have to adjust to the changes I see, holding fast to the truths of the Gospel.  The message is the same. Methods may change. Second, I can’t rest on my laurels.  There is still much to do. As God said to Joshua, “There remains much land left to conquer.” There is still work to do. Let’s be faithful to very end.