Luke 6:42

I'm back in Jacksonville and I'm excited to start the 2013 year strong.  As I look back on Christmas break, I am happy with the times I got to spend with family and a few friends, I just wish I was more prepared in advance that I would not have the same amount of time off as last year to see everyone I wanted.  I wish I could've seen many more people, grabbed lunch, or coffee, and caught up on life, but it was a very fun time nonetheless.  As my last blog indicates, it snowed, and I made a snowman.  Later I got to go sledding with my brother and sister, make Christmas cookies, play Christmas songs in a grocery store for 6 hours, play games, watch movies.  There are two things I watched over break that seemed to coincide.  I watched Hunger Games and a documentary on the Fab Five (the 5 freshman that started for the 1991 Michigan basketball team).

I would like to apologize to all of those people who have read the Hunger Games book.  This remembrance is from someone who has only seen the movie a couple times.  The movie consists of 12 districts, and from my inferences, these districts seem to be very poor and run by a bigger government type thingy.  We experience the story through the eyes of Katniss Everdeen, a girl who is pretty talented with a bow and arrow.  In case you have no idea of the premise, every year, a boy and girl are selected from each district as participants in the Hunger Games, a fight-to-the-death competition where only one of the 24 will survive (win).  The "lucky" selected few get taken to some city in a fancy train with fancy food, the slaughter-loving masses shout with starving smiles as they see their temporary idols carted in, as if they had been going through a drought and now saw a train full of meat.  The games are televised and this "super government" is entertained.  Everyone in this society dresses with exaggerated styles.  If it weren't for the Hunger Games, I bet thoughts of the people in the 12 districts would be nonexistent.  When we know all the pain, actual hunger, and oppression that happens in the districts, it is easy to get angry at this super-government for sacrificing teenagers in order to be entertained and maintain peace.  When we know the pain and even know the character, we naturally side with them more.

For those of you who are not sports fans, the Fab Five are a group of five freshman players that were recruited to play for the 1991 Michigan team.  Jimmy King, Jalen Rose, Chris Webber, Ray Jackson, and Juwan Howard.  As each player was doing an interview, remembering their college years and all the doubts from the college world if these boys could compete as freshman, the viewers got a peek inside their lives growing up.  People saw them as trash-talkers, bringing a hip hop style, they wore baggier shorts than others, they came from "the hood".  It could be easy to assume many things about them based on their upbringings.  But as the documentary told us the story through their eyes, showing the viewers the places where they grew up, some of the 5 lacking parents, being threatened by rival schools.  I remember an interview that Jalen Rose had talking about the time they were going to play reigning champion Duke, with Christian Laettner, Grant Hill, and Bobby Hurley.  He spoke of how everyone saw Grant Hill as the perfect black basketball player, son of Dallas Cowboys great Calvin Hill.  His mom was college roommates with Hilary Clinton.  He went to Duke, doing mighty good for himself.  The Fab Five hated him and the Duke Blue Devils.  Jalen Rose felt that his Michigan teammates were hated, less than human, incapable, and being like Grant Hill was the only way to be liked or acceptable to society.  (Funny story, growing up, Grant Hill was my favorite player, I was obsessed, knew way too much about him, drew pictures of him, collected so many basketball cards of him, wrote him a letter, etc.)  It's easier to get angry at those who are given everything when you look through the eyes of those who just scraped by.

Switching back and forth from Jacksonville to Milwaukee, ghetto to suburbs, lower class to middle class, black to white neighborhoods, I notice more and more the ignorance and lack of understanding on both sides of the other side.  You may have a sense of what these other people are like, from the news, from movies, from particular encounters of people unlike yourself, but I feel it's very dangerous to generalize, make assumptions, ignore a group for the sake of comfort, and it goes both ways, but I feel that more responsibility lies with the majority group to lift up the least of us.

These are just a few thoughts I had over break.

I have one request regarding ministry.  In order to bless a couple of the elementary schools in our neighborhood with much-needed supplies, we took a tally of which supplies individual teachers needed the most including dry erase markers, pencils (kids always break them and take them home), lined paper, hand sanitizer, construction paper, etc.  I want to give you the opportunity to be a blessing to our teachers here in Brentwood.  If you'd like to donate any supplies listed above, you can ship them to 325 W. 22nd St., Jacksonville, FL 32206 or if you'd like to make a special donation, you can go to 2ndmile-jax.com and click "Donate" and in the comment box put, "School Supplies" and make a one-time donation.  Blessings.

The Fab Five