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Philip Harrelson
WHEN YOUR BACK IS AGAINST THE WALL, PAT RILEY, NBA COACH
The Los Angeles Lakers were dominating the Boston Celtics in the final round of the 1984 National Basketball Association championship. The Lakers beat Boston on their home floor in Game 1. They beat them by 33 points in Game 3. They were ahead by 10 points in Game 4 and cruising and then it all changed.
Two days after losing the deciding seventh game, the Lakers were back in Los Angeles for their last team meeting. Coach Pat Riley looked at the young faces and said, “Even though we lost, they can’t take away our pride and our dignity; we own those. We are not chokers or losers. We are champions who simply lost a championship.”
The Lakers came back for the 1984-1985 season sharply focused. All year long, they heard about how they were a “show time” team that folded as soon as things got tough. The Celtics and their fans referred to us as the L.A. Fakers. Abuse and sarcasm were heaped on, and the Lakers had to take it. Yet still they achieved a tremendous season and ripped through the place at a high pace. On May 27, they got to face their tormentor, the Celtics, in Boston Garden.
The next day’s headlines called Game 1 of the 1985 finals The Memorial Day Massacre. A 148-114 humiliation was the most embarrassing game in the history of the Lakers franchise. The Lakers saw themselves become exactly what they had been called: choke artists, underachievers. The troubling question was why was it that every time the Lakers faced the Celtics, they became paralyzed with fear.
Before they went out for Game 2, the Lakers gathered in the dinghy locker room of the Boston Garden. The players were sitting there, ready to listen and to believe. Every now and then, you have your back pushed up against a wall. It seems like there is nobody you can depend on but yourself. That is how the Lakers felt on that day. If they lost, the choke reputation would be chiseled into stone, a permanent verdict. If they won, they had an opportunity to prove they could keep on winning. It was a do or die situation.
Coach Riley faced Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the star center, and said, “When I saw you and your father on the bus today, it made me realize what this whole moment is about. You spent a lot of time with Big Al today. Maybe you needed that voice. Maybe everyone in this room needs to hear that kind of voice right now--the voice of your dad, the voice of somebody in the past who was there when you didn’t think you could get the job done.”
“A lot of you don’t think you can win today. A lot of you don’t think you can beat the Celtics. I want each of you to close your eyes and listen.” And they did.
And Riley began his tale, “When I was nine years old my dad told my brothers, Lee and Lenny, to take me down to Lincoln Heights and get me involved in the basketball games. They would throw me into a game and I would get pushed and shoved. Day after day, I ran home crying and hid in the garage. I didn’t want anything to do with basketball.”
“This went on for two or three weeks. One night, I didn’t come to the dinner table, so my dad got up and walked out to the garage where he found me hunkered down in a corner. He picked me up, put his arm around me, and walked to the kitchen. My brother Lee was upset with him. ‘Why do you make us take him down there? He doesn’t want to play. He’s too young.’
“My father stood up and staring at Lee, said, ‘I want you to take him there because I want you to teach him not to be afraid, that there should be no fear. Teach him that competition brings out the very best and the very worst in us. Right now, it’s bring out the worst, but if he sticks with it, it’s going to bring out the best.’ He then looked at his nine-year-old, teary-eyed son and said, ‘Pat, you have to go back there.’
So Coach Riley told his players, “I thought I was never going to be able to get over being hurt and afraid, but I eventually did get over it.” As he was talking, he was slowly pacing back and forth the locker room. Looking at the players, he saw that Michael Cooper was crying. A couple of other players looked as if they would start crying too.
Coach Riley went on, “I don’t know what it is going to take for us to win tonight but I do believe that we are going out there like warriors, and that would make our fathers proud.”
The Lakers won the game. They also won three of the next four games. The 1985 championship was won by the Lakers. Seven times in Laker history, the NBA Finals had been lost to those adversaries. Now the Celtic Myth was slain and the choke image with it.
During the off season, Michael Cooper told Coach Riley that the pregame message had gone deep for him. As a boy, Cooper had a grievous leg wound, an ugly cut through the muscle. Doctors did not think he would ever walk correctly again, much less become an athlete. He was sustained through those times by a wonderful mother and devoted uncle. So he had heard those voices.
All of us have at least one great voice deep inside. People are products of their environments. A lucky few are born into situations in which positive messages abound. Others grow up hearing messages of fear and failure which they must block out to hear the positive. But the positive and courageous voice will always emerge, somewhere, sometime, for all of us. Listen for it, and your breakthroughs will come.
Fear of failure will lead you to despair, wrong decisions, and host of other problems. However, when the voice comes through it will counsel courage, that affirms your life and your ability, and it will position you to do your very best.
We Wish You a Merry...Chrismukah?
Continuing the current trend of large-scale mergers and acquisitions, it was announced today at a press conference that Christmas and Hanukkah will merge. An industry source said that the deal had been in the works about 1300 years. While details were not available at press time, it is believed that the overhead cost of having twelve days of Christmas and eight days of Hanukkah was becoming prohibitive for both sides. By combining forces, we’re told, the world will be able to enjoy consistently high-quality service during the Fifteen Days of Chrismukah, as the new holiday is being called.
Massive layoffs are expected, with lords a-leaping and maids a-milking being the hardest hit. As part of the conditions of the agreement, the letters on the dreidel, currently in Hebrew, will be replaced by Latin, thus becoming unintelligible to a wider audience.
Also, instead of translating to "A great miracle happened there," the message on the dreidel will be the more generic: "Miraculous stuff happens." In exchange, it is believed that Jews will be allowed to use Santa Claus and his vast merchandising resources for buying and delivering their gifts.
One of the sticking points holding up the agreement for at least three hundred years was the question of whether Jewish children could leave milk and cookies for Santa even after having eaten meat for dinner. A breakthrough came last year, when Oreos were finally declared to be Kosher. All sides appeared happy about this.
Fortunately for all concerned, he said, Kwanzaa will help to maintain the competitive balance. He then closed the press conference by leading all present in a rousing rendition of "Oy Vey, All Ye Faithful."
From: http://www.beliefnet.com
Jim Cymbala stated in his book Breakthrough Prayer, “The God who delights to show mercy is near, waiting for us to call on his name” (page 54).He adds "Today prayer for personal guidance is almost a lost art. Our tendency is to run around doing what we think best and then ask God to bless our activity. We can learn a lesson from the leaders of Israel who approached the prophet Jeremiah in the midst of a political and military crisis. Their request was simple: “Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do” (Jeremiah 42:3). God’s plan for our lives includes the “where” we should go and the “what” we should do"(page 57).
A DRASTIC CHANGE
Dr. Bernard Nathanson was the leading abortion doctor in the United States in the 1970’s. He had campaigned vigorously for the legalization of abortion and he himself had performed 60,000 abortions. He even believed his intentions were good and that he was doing a righteous thing by providing a service that guaranteed a woman’s right to control her body.
But something changed Dr. Nathanson’s point view. It was a medical breakthrough called the ultrasound, introduced in 1976. This device literally opened a window on fetal development. The first time Nathanson saw an ultrasound in action, he was with a group of residents gathered around a pregnant patient in a darkened examining room watching a demonstration by a technician. The technician applied a conductive gel to the woman’s abdomen and then began working a handheld sensor over her stomach. As the screen clarified, Nathason was amazed. He could see a throbbing heart. When the technician focused closely on the image, Nathanson could see all four chambers of the heart pumping blood.
And during the scan Nathanson became convicted. He said that his mind had dropped the word fetus in favor of the word baby. Suddenly, everything he had been learning about the child in the womb since his entry into the medi...
Jim Cymbala stated, “To prevail against the devices of Satan, it is vital that we understand one thing especially: God shows mercy in answer to prayer” (Breakthrough Prayer, page 52).
One of the most compelling story lost in the invention of the phone was the urgency of the great inventor Alexander Graham Bell to make a breakthrough in communications for the sake of a loved one. No one had more vested interest than Bell, whose mother was deaf. It’s been said that “the telephone, which the deaf could never use, owed its genesis to Bell’s unique understanding of the physiology of hearing.” Unfortunately, the phone as a product had overshadowed Bell’s ongoing commitment to the deaf and his many products he invented or designed to improve their lives. Bell’s parents were educated people, and both his father and grandfather were speech experts. However, his mother, Eliza Grace Symonds, a portrait painter and an accomplished musician, started to lose her hearing when her son was twelve. In 1861, a double misfortune occurred. Mabel Hubbard, Bell’s future wife, developed scarlet fever and also lost her hearing. Before his invention, Bell had taught single-mindedly at Sarah Fuller’s Boston Day School for the Deaf, and established a school for teachers of the deaf and a private school for deaf students in Boston, Massachusetts. It was another 15 years later before Bell began working with his wife on her speech and invented the phone the same year. Someone noted, “Alexander Graham Bell began by seeking to help the deaf, and he ended up with the telephone.” http://campus.northpark.edu/history//WebChron/Technology/AGBell.html
Dr. Elmer Towns, in his book Praying The Lord’s Prayer for Spiritual Breakthrough, tells the story of a small son was playing with his french fries, dipping the end of one in the ketchup, and then waving it like a baton. His father was enjoying the moment. Mother had gone to a seminar, so for lunch the father took out his son and bought him a hamburger and french fries.
The young boy was more interested in playing with the french fries than eating them, though. “Eat your french fries...” the father coaxed. The son continued to wave his "french-fry baton," and the band played on. The father looked at his watch, but he did not have anywhere he had to be.
It was his habit to hurry about everything. After lunch, they were just going back home. Then almost by instinct, the father reached over and did something most fathers have done. He took one french fry out of his son’s package.
“No!” the son said sharply, and slapped the father’s hand. Then, raising his voice, he repeated, “No!” Apparently no one saw the little boy slap at his father’s hand. No one heard what the little boy said.
The stunned father sat surveying the situation, though saying nothing. Who does he think he is? he thought. He’s my son ...I bought these french fries, and I should be able to eat the fries that he won’t eat!
That was not the case, though. The little boy had already gone back to leading his make-believe band as though he had forgotten the situation. The father, however, had not forgotten what happened. He thought to himself, I could get mad and never buy him another french fry in his life.
The father was not mad at his son, though; he was more surprised than anything. He was not the type to get even. If anything, he was a mild kind of guy. He continued to think. I could bury him in french fries and smother him in ketchup, I love him so much.
The father sat in the plastic chair, watching his son dip another fry in ketchup, and lead the band. The little guy had no idea of the thoughts going through his father’s mind. We are like little children playing at life. Our heavenly Father reaches over to take one of our french fries – say in the form of wanting a couple of hours of worship on Sunday, or asking that we support His Church with our money.
Too often we slap God’s hand, telling Him, “No! Keep Your hand out of my life."
God does not want to take all our french fries from us. He wants just a taste. Like a selfish child, however, we say, “No!”
The question of the little boy and his father is a question about our heavenly Father and His children:
Who owns your french fries? When we are thankful to God we recognize that it is God who owns our french fries. A thankful heart makes room for God’s plan and makes way for God’s provision!
I’ve been reading the book by Don Richardson, "Eternity In Their Hearts." In the book, Richardson tells of how God implants His plan for mankind’s eternity into their culture. In one section, he wrote about the difficulty missionaries had in communicating the good news of Jesus Christ to the Chinese people. But one day, there was a breakthrough.
Richardson, writing about a missionary, said, "He was studying a particular Chinese ideograph, the one which means "righteous." He noticed that it contained an upper and lower part. The upper part was simply the Chinese symbol for a "Lamb." Directly under was simply a second symbol, the first person pronoun, "I" or "me."
Suddenly, the missionary discerned an amazingly well-coded message hidden within the ideograph: "I under the lamb am righteous!"
This startled the Chinese people. They never noticed it, but once the missionary pointed this out, they saw it clearly. The as...
ONLY THREE PARACHUTES
An amusing story about the plane going over the Atlantic Ocean with the only people on board the pilot a scientist, a minister and a back packer. The plane has engine trouble and the pilot goes to the passengers to inform them of the situation. He explains that the plane is about to crash and that there is only three parachutes seeing that it’s his plane He informs them that he’s taking one and jumps out!
Leaving three passengers and two parachutes. The scientist says "Well I’m on the verge of a scientific breakthrough I will be sorely missed." So he jumps out, leaving the backpacker and the pastor.
So the minister says, "Look mate I’ve had a good life I know where I’m going and you have your whole life ahead of you, you take the last parachute."
Then before the Minister could finish his words the young back packer says, "No worries, mate, do you see that scientist who jumped out, "Yeah, he’s just jumped out with my backpack"
YEAGER AND THE SOUND BARRIER
Chuck Yeager was the first man to ever break the sound barrier in an aircraft. Planes like the British Meteor jets that approached the speed of sound (760MPH at sea level, 660 MPH at 40,000 feet) had encountered severe buffeting of the controls. At that time, no one knew for sure whether an airplane could exceed "Mach 1", the speed of sound. The U.S. Army was determined to find out first.
The Army had developed a small, bullet-shaped aircraft, the Bell X-1, to challenge the sound barrier. A civilian pilot, Slick Goodlin, had taken the Bell X-1 to .7 Mach, when Yeager started to fly it. He pushed the small plane up to .8, .85, and then to .9 Mach, but backed off when the plane began to shake uncontrollably. The date of Oct. 14, 1947 was set for the attempt to do Mach 1.
As he approached Mach 1, that plane began to shake and rattle and be buffeted from side to side, so much so that he was not sure that he would not explode in mid-air.
But on this day Chuck said, “I refuse to turn back now! If I die, I die trying but I am not going to back down! I’ve been close before, but no matter what happens today, I am going for it!”
And with that he shoved the controls forward and headed for the sonic wall!
In the account of this momentous event recorded in the book “The Right Stuff” the author records: The X-1 went through "the sonic wall" without so much as a bump. As the speed topped out at Mach 1.05, Yeager had the sensation of shooting straight through the top of the sky. The sky turned a deep purple and all at once the stars and the moon came out - the sun shone at the same time. ... He was simply looking out into space. ... He was master of the sky. His was a king.
(From a sermon by Richard Cook, The Battle Before The Breakthrough, 7/30/2010)
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