Noah's Arkhives

   When I was growing up, I didn't realize that the apostles were ordinary, imperfect people like most of us.  When I got to watch the series, The Chosen, the full humanity of the apostles and even Jesus were brought to life and it brings me to tears most of the time because it means that ordinary, nameless people like us can be part of God's inner circle.  Not one of them were born with halos on their heads, they were as ordinary as they come struggling through this rat race of a life. One of them was someone who'll bend the laws if needed. One of them had been in prostitution.  One of them was in a profession that is viewed more cut throat than what our Wall Street guys do now. One of them was someone who only trusts himself and another is even a trained assassin.  But one of them is someone who loves money and achievements more like many of us now. And way later, a mass murderer got converted to be one of Jesus' followers.  They weren't a flock of famous or wanna

  There seems to be an ongoing trend nowadays with junior basketball and I am confused whether this is something good or bad for basketball in the long run.  In the past, a lot of these basketball associations, specially the big ones, try their very best to get a coach that had no relationships with any of the kids in their teams.  I think the purpose of this was that every player was on a level playing field to compete for minutes. Nowadays, more and more associations are allowing parents to coach and I am starting to see that some parent coaches are obviously manoeuvring to give extra time to their offspring when they don't necessarily deserve it.  Even those in assistant coach positions do this by manipulating the substitution patterns and when the head coach is unavailable and they take over the team for some games.  Of course, if your son or your daughter are top level talent, they seldom will be affected by this.  Those that are of course that are just a little bit better tha