Emma runs our basketball camp. Russell Carr, our WCS Athletic Director and boys' basketball coach, has his name on the paperwork but we all know the power lies with Emma. She took over for Amber who was the de-facto boss for years before her. Russell and several of us do the coaching- Emma does everything else. She does the enrolling, the handling of money, the laundry, the picture taking, the setting up of Slip and Slide in the younger camps, the copying of all literature, and the roasted watermelon which wraps up all the sessions. Just four weeks removed from her graduation from WCS, Emma is headed to college on a volleyball scholarship. I have no doubt she will be resoundingly successful academically, athletically, spiritually, and socially just like she was in high school.
It's been a great two and a half weeks of camp with only two days to go. Emma has been in the middle of several Love Triangles which are manufactured by Coach Carr and myself, romantically pairing her with a number of our high school players who help us coach. Emma's a good sport about it- it's almost a camp tradition! During our first week of camp this summer, Emma and I became involved in a conversation about blue eyes, a trait we both share. She told me about the theory that all blue eyed people are related, tracing our ancestry to a relative six thousand years ago with a mutant gene. I googled it and read about what she told me. And as I read, I found some other things about the blue eyed portion of the US population, mainly that it is declining. The study was conducted by Dr. Mark Grant who first concluded blue-eyed people live longer than others, based on how many blue eyed folks he saw in nursing homes compared to the population at large. More research, however, showed him the fallacy of his hypothesis. He concluded immigration and the intermarriage of ethnic groups were the root causes of the decline in blue eyed births in the US. (Side note: Did you know boys are 3-5% more likely to be born with blue eyes?) Well, now I know I'm part of a minority group!
You know, I think all those bullet points about eye color are fascinating but that's not why I'm writing this. As we talked, I discovered a cool attribute of Emma- she can name the eye color of all the Caucasian people she knows! I tested her and she can up with a quick answer each time. (Side note #2: My former student Richard McDonald can recite the birthdays of everyone he knows.) Do you know I can tell you to any degree of certainty the eye color of only five people? That small group is/was my mom, my dad, my brothers Dave and Scott, and myself and the only reason I know is that we all shared that blue eyed genetic trait. I cannot tell you the eye color of my grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins/nieces/nephews/ or any ex-girlfriend. I feel bad about the last one because I'm sure I knew at one time unless I was incredibly stupid which I have been. I'm just not observant....but Emma is. She notices something that I might see but forget quickly. Emma logs it into her memory. Maybe I'm so big picture oriented that I overlook the small strokes that paint the portraits of those I could befriend/influence/help/teach/mentor/comfort. I think Jesus was like Emma in that regard, seeing characteristics and qualities in people that others did not care to see. He especially reached out to the segment of His society consistently ignored, including blinded beggars. In Matthew 6:22, He taught,
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
No differentiation of eye color there and it's obvious the connotation is spiritual vision and not physical. My blue eyes were born flawed but LASIK surgery reconstructed me to 20-20 clarity. I have to confess that sometimes my spiritual eyesight needs that kind of
Applicable quote of the day:
''Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?''
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