1. I’m a Mavs fan. I watched a great comeback win yesterday over the Phoenix Suns. It looks like they’ll make the playoffs in a tough Western Conference. Julie and I got nosebleed tickets with the Chappotins to watch them dominate Golden State last week—oh so satisfying after getting kicked out of the playoffs by the Warriors in the first round last year.

I was skeptical about the Mavs’ ability to win big games after the Jason Kidd trade, but they’ve got my attention now. We’ll see how they finish the season and perform in the playoffs.

2. I ran in the Big D Texas Marathon 5K with a good friend this weekend. I was pleased to finish at (what I consider) a decent time after not running very consistently since we’ve been in Dallas. We were mainly there to support a new friend of mine who was running the half-marathon. It was quite an accomplishment. Less than a year ago he struggled even to run a mile, and now he’s just finished running 13.1 miles at less than a 10 minute/mile pace. Pretty impressive.

All of this has made me want to get back into running again. I’m planning on participating in a 6 mile Mud-run event in November, and maybe even the White Rock half-marathon in December. Sometime I’ll have to share the hilarity of my experience running/walking/crawling the original marathon event in Athens, Greece when I studied abroad there in 1999. I trained for a whopping 3 weeks. It took me more than 2 weeks to recover. Enough said.

3. The Porches and I are going to join a flag football league in Uptown. It’s co-ed 8 v. 8 on Thursday nights. Everyone plays a game and heads to a local bar afterwards to hang out. Should be a great way to have fun and meet people.

Every one of these everyday life activities—basketball, running, flag football— presents itself with opportunities to enjoy the good world God has made for us and to live out the way of Jesus in friendship with other people. Living missionally is sometimes not about doing new things as much as it is seeing the same old things with a different set of lenses.