Oh Say Can You See CC?

I've taken vacation this week and have been considering various ways I could spend my time. CC Sabathia was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers a few days ago and pitched for the Crew last night. I made sure I watched that on MLB.TV. I can watch every baseball game on MLB.TV. Every day there are over a dozen games available to watch from noon to midnight. I can watch the Red Sox after lunch, the Indians after dinner, the Brewers of course, and then finish the night out west watching the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now that's day! It could be every day if I wanted it to be.

But of course I can't watch a dozen baseball games everyday because I belong to Netflix. They send me three DVDs in the mail and after I watch it I mail it back so they can send me more. Right now I have The Golden Compass, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and Sweeney Todd just waiting for me.

I would get right on those if it wasn't for the fact that my brother got me the entire collection of the television series Arrested Development on DVD for my birthday. 53 half-hour episodes in all. That would only take a full day, with no breaks, to watch. But when will that day come? It will have to wait because I've been itching to watch the three Lord of the Rings movies, which I own. Add those three director's cut movies together and you're talking a good 11 to 12 hours of viewing pleasure.

This week was not supposed to be about watching things on TV, however, it was to be about doing stuff in Chicago that I hadn't gotten to do before. For weeks I've been thinking about going to the Chicago History Museum, the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Sears Tower, the Brookfield Zoo, tour some of the architecture in the Loop, the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff in Oak Park and Hyde Park, Graceland Cemetery, and go for a walk along the lake front. Oh, and there are about 100 restaurants I would like to try and the free concerts at the Chicago Cultural Center and the Grant Park Music Festival.

Man, what a burden to be limited to 24 hours per day. What a burden to have so much stuff available to entertain me. For the past week the Bible lesson from Matthew I mentioned in my last post has been stuck in my head. I keep thinking about my heavy burdens and Christ's light yoke. Some burdens really? Poor Tony. I'm sure you feel sorry for me. The saddest thing about these so called "burdens" of mine is that there have actually been moments when my inability to tackle all this stuff has gotten me down. How pathetic really. Yes Lord, your yoke is easy, your burden is light, and best of all picking up your cross is actually meaningful.

I didn't plan it this way, but I discovered something this past weekend that I have grabbed a hold of for the rest of this week: real joy and refreshment comes when I focus my time on my family instead of the stuff I can do and watch. Yes I did get to the Lincoln Park Zoo and saw WALL-E today, but it was with my wife and son. It's been great: walks to the playground, playing Hot Wheels in the living room, sitting in the backyard watching Preston on his little bike. Now I'm not saying my burdens or my "cross" has been all that amazing... but learning to love and do something for others instead of consuming and do stuff only for myself has been pretty cool.

I still haven't gotten to those Arrest Development shows, and my goodness there are baseball games going on right now that I'm missing as I type this, but that's okay and will stay okay as long as Christ calls me, and his Spirit helps me see that focusing on others is a real joy. You discover something the more you give and the more you serve: his yoke is actually easy and his burden really is light. In Christ you actually do find rest.