In baseball, as in life, there are the written rules and the unwritten rules.  In major league baseball the unwritten rules are known as “the code.”

While I’d heard of “the code,” it’s even more complicated than I realized.

This week I finished reading The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime by Jason Turbow and Michael Duca.

As a lifelong baseball fan I found it valuable to understand how the game of baseball is actually played by major league players.

As I wrote this book review over and over again I was grateful for you readers who continue to read mysilentscream.com despite the typos and grammatical errors many of you have found.

I feel most grateful to those readers – you know who you are – who subscribe to mysilentscream.com.

I often see errors – or my dear wife Amy points them out to me – that are caught after I “publish”.  You subscribers overlook my errors that are silently corrected in a subsequent edit so no one else has to tolerate them.

Author and speaker Phil Callaway took an oath of honesty for one year, and wrote about what he discovered.

“To Be Perfectly Honest” is formatted as a year-long diary, with 365 entries chronicling the author’s year of trying to tell the truth.

I found “To Be Perfectly Honest” to be very good at exposing weaknesses in our lives; in MY life.

Though I was taught better, I grew up an insecure liar. As an adult I am committed to telling the truth, but I am amazed how often “little white lies” creep out unexpectedly when talking to a stranger in the phone who is not giving me the customer service I think I want and deserve.

Mitch Stokes, in his book A Shot Of Faith (To The Head), takes on the doctrines of Sam Harris, Victor J. Stenger, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, among others.

A Shot Of Faith is not a light afternoon read, a relaxing bedside read before lights out at the end of a long day, this book is thought provoking and challenging.

Challenging intellectually stimulating atheists is not for the light at heart. Stokes takes us through three eddies of philosophical influence as he wades into their water.

Stokes argues that “there are three concepts — rationality, design, and absolute standards — connected through the notion of proper function.”

If you’ve been a reader of mysilentscream.com for a while you know that I use a variety of biblical translations.  I have my preferences, but I really do enjoy reading a variety of different translations.

Different translations use different styles of translating the original languages into English.

The NASB, ESV and others use a more literal word for word translation.
The NRSV, NIV, and others have a more phrase for phrase translation.
The NCV, NLT and others are increasingly thought for thought translations.
The Message and The Voice are both paraphrases; their translators are retelling and explaining the text while seeking to clarify the meaning of the text. 1

What God Did To Win Your Heart.

It’s a captivating subtitle: What God Did To Win Your Heart.

Lucado’s challenge is to personalize the life and death of Christ.  
Lucado explains that Jesus’ proclamation “I did it just for you.” is his resounding, enduring and personalized message.

Lucado makes the case that the trial, judgment, and execution was not happenstance.  “Knowing his last deeds would be forever pondered, don’t you think he chose them carefully? Deliberately? Of course he did. There were no accidents that day.”

Proclaiming to the end, “I did it for you. I did it all for you.”

I’ve read and valued Patrick Morley’s book Man In The Mirror.  I found it relevant, poignant and inspirational.  I had not read anything by Patrick Morley in years, but I was anticipating more of the same.

I was not disappointed.

Morley has a great reputation, and based on my experiences he certainly knows what he’s talking about.

Whether I would choose to refer to his “7 Primal Needs” as primal not I did agree with him that they were of import.

Man Alive: Transforming Your 7 Primal Needs into a Powerful Spiritual Life is based on his decades of discipling and mentoring men.

I’m forty-nine years old. I don’t feel old, but I don’t feel young either.

I spend my life encouraging others to live their life well.  Mysilentscream.com exists — through stories, some tips, and some Scriptures — to inspire you to live well. 

As I’m nearing fifty I’m looking for “older” people to inspire me to live the rest of my life well too.  Billy Graham’s book Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well seemed like a good fit.

Billy Graham’s book is honest, vulnerable, and inspiring.

On the new Hawaii Five-O we were introduced to Kamekona, the proprietor of Waiola Shave Ice and Kamekona’s shrimp truck.  Until we went to Hawaii I thought “shrimp trucks” would be synonymous with a “foodborne illnesses.” 1

Fortunately, we fought those fears back down.

The food from the shrimp trucks were my favorite meals I had on our vacation and among the most reasonably priced meals we ate.

Our two favorite shrimp truck meals were on Oahu.

We crave for meaning and purpose, security and significance, love and hope.

Billy Graham has offered wise quote-worthy advise on these and many subjects for generations.

This book — Billy Graham in Quotes – provides sound bites with wisdom for the ages. Franklin Graham, Billy’s son, and Donna Lee Toney have collected thousands of quotes gathered into 107 categories (listed below) that will delight, motivate and enrich readers.

Here are ten quotes that I valued. You may value others. I loved this collection of wise words and sage suggestions, and I think that you will too.