My name is Peter Alexander, and I want to share how God blessed my son Matthew's soccer team, the Vipers, which I coach.  My wife Michelle helped me see God move in our group of eight- and nine-year-old boys, one of whom has leukemia. My assistant coach Perry Bumanlag and his wife Dee (team mom with Michelle) helped immensely.

I honestly do not know much about soccer, but I know about God. So I decided at the beginning of the season to apply Biblical/spiritual principals to the team:

• Believing=faith + hope
• teamwork=unity, fun and friendship=love

We finished the regular season undefeated 15-0-1. Going into the tournament I had to build my faith as well as the team's that we could win the championship. I found one obstacle of faith could be fear of disappointment. ("What if we don't win?")  Reading Hebrews 11:1 and Romans 5 ...

From Your Eyes to Your Mind and Heart

Many of us keep diaries. Even more write down notes to themselves, annotate photos, and perhaps save letters, postcards, or other mementos we collect along the way of our lives or the ones someone else sent to us. Remembering the past is a sometimes sad, sometimes happy, yet always intensely personal experience that is different for each of us. Some find it hard to revisit certain memories; some of us find it extremely difficult to share memories with others, especially if these memories deal with feelings.

Interestingly enough, God is concerned about our memories. In the book of Deuteronomy, God, through Moses, strongly cautions the Israelites to "watch" themselves so they would not "forget the things" their "eyes have seen" or allow them to "slip" from their "hearts as long" as they would live. In and of itself, this is a great admonition, but God does not stop there: He also demands that the people of Israel would teach these things to their children and grandchildren (Deuteronomy 4:9).  The threefold implication is striking: memories are to be kept in our minds, in our hearts, and shared with our children and grandchildren. ...