I keep track of college basketball during the season, but I don’t watch any games until “March Madness,” the end-of-season tournament made up of the best 68 teams in the nation. Now, they are down to 16 teams left standing, soon to be 8, then four, and then the national championship on Monday night, April 7th. This game is my second favorite of the year, just behind the Super Bowl. A number of us will be watching it together upstairs in the Discipleship Center at JBC on the super big screen, with fried chicken and other food that people bring. You all are welcome to come and watch it with us. I am hoping it is Duke and whoever. I bet you can’t guess why my favorite team is Duke. I played basketball in high school and college. Both my boys played from the time they could dribble through four years of college, so I watched hundreds of hours of basketball. A number of my grandkids play now. It has been 40 years since I have touched a basketball, but I still enjoy watching it and cheering on my favorite teams. We don’t have television, and I am often busy when teams are playing, but I enjoy watching the games I am interested in on YouTube in the evening on my iPad. I will watch the replay of Duke and Arizona that played earlier this evening tonight. Competition is an interesting characteristic of many people; it often brings out the best in people and sometimes the worst.

The Bible has many illustrations using completion, so it is a characteristic God put in us. I spend almost an hour daily memorizing scripture and reviewing the verses I have already memorized. I have an App called Bible Memory that I use to help me. The main help it gives me is the extra motivation to spend an hour every day working on it. The motivation comes from the competition between myself and others using the same App. We get points for memorizing and reviewing verses, thousands of people use the App, and everyone gets ranked on how many points they have earned. My brother Cliff and several of my Pastor friends are way ahead of me. I am in 235th place and trying hard to move up. If I miss one day of memorizing, I can fall two or three places; I hate it! Several people have accused me of memorizing scripture for the wrong reason. My ultimate motives are pure, but it helps to have some competition. Try it and see if you can catch me. Scripture Memory is the name of the App.