Stephen De La Vega

  The Stanley Cup . One of the most revered trophies in professional sports. The cup itself has never changed, and it is the only professional trophy to display the names of every player of the championship team each year. As a hockey fan, I’ve seen this trophy in person. Not as my home team skated around the ice with it after winning the Stanley Cup Playoffs. That hasn’t happened yet. I’ve seen it in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto where it stands protected and honored most of the year. One thing I appreciate about the great sport of hockey: There isn’t a lot of glory outside of teamwork. Don’t get me wrong, the sport has its share of superstars, but, in its typically low-scoring gameplay, even the superstars thrive only within well-managed, cooperative team play. Teammates continually support and assist each other with humility as they work in unison to get the puck past the opposing goaltender. I imagine most hockey players are not in the game for individual glory. Maybe t...

Aspen trees are possibly my favorite trees because of their picturesque trunks and delicate leaves. In most of Northern America we call them quaking aspen (or trembling aspen) because the leaves quake or tremble, even at the slightest breeze. Did you know that an aspen grove grows from a single tree? Aspens occasionally start as seedlings, but young aspens more typically grow from underground roots, and, as the roots travel underground, more and more sprouts shoot up. (See clonal colonization .) So, the snow-nestled trees in the pictures in this post are one single organism. You might call them one single tree. The larger tree you see in the foreground is the mother tree. All the other trees in the grove (or clone) sprouted from the roots of the mother tree. So, the entire grove grew and thrived as it remained connected to the root system of a single, life-giving tree. Jesus said… I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you wi...

We’ve all listened. We put our ears to a sea shell so we could hear the ocean. Of course, what we really heard is the resonance of the noise in our immediate environment, but we can truthfully say God made the science of sound, and, yes, He put the ocean in the shells. How did He put something so big into something we can hold in our hands? This is more awesome to ponder with the imagination of a child. ”Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Mark 10:14-15 Let’s engage the wonder of a child when we read this post. Pause a moment. Put on your creative thinking caps, because we are going to take a journey to where we may have never been before or perhaps have forgotten. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 The heavens declare the glor...