The Ernie and Bernie Show

In 1975 the Tennessee men's basketball team finally crashed the party. What made this team so exciting was the length of time since their last visit. Tennessee's last conference tournament championship in basketball was in 1949. Their last appearance in the NCAA tournament had been over nine years ago so the fans and program were hungry. They had a respected coach, Ray Mears, but the terms national basketball powerhouse and Tennessee still rarely found its way in the same sentence.

Then came 1974. Coach Mears had an assistant on his staff named, Stu Aberdeen. Stu recruited Ernie Grunfeld, (who lived in New York City) to play for Tennessee with the promise that he would institute a running offense and that Ernie would have the green light to shoot at will. This was an huge concession to the new recruit but Coach Mears was tired of losing. If it meant he needed to create a caste system for his basketball team, than a caste system it was. But Stu wasn't finished recruiting the New York area, and the following year he recruited Bernie King to play for the Tennessee Vols. The Ernie and Bernie show was born.

The Lonely Post

One of my favorite places to linger when I was growing up was this beautiful spot atop Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, TN. (See accompanying picture) It didn't take a lot of imagination to visualize the Union army below, surrounded on all sides, their supplies diminishing daily, morale fading quickly and the Confederates standing guard from above, entrenched on the mountains surrounding Chattanooga.

The Confederate forces, had their armies camped on Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Artillery was placed in strategic positions to render a direct attack and this status quo remained for around six weeks. Passivity was not the friend of the Confederates and they were about to pay the price for their in-activity. On the sixth week, President Lincoln ordered General Grant to Chattanooga and to use whatever means necessary to open up the blocked supply lines and break the rebel siege.

What To Do When Nothing Is Working Out?

I recently googled this question, "What to do when nothing is working out?" and I received 1,080,000,000 responses. Yes, over 1 billion pages on the Internet are devoted to answering this question. 

It is probably of little surprise that very few of these over a billion pages suggest turning to God in your time of trouble. But if I'm being truthful, I need to confess that my first instincts are not to always seek God in my time of suffering. I'm much more prone to try to fix the situation (s) myself. 

Yet the fact that we have so many words devoted to this subject is a telling display of our own pride and self-reliance. There is nothing that I can do, say, imagine, manipulate, or reason, that will truly answer the question, "What to do when nothing is working out?"

"But still I try."

It seems very foolish when I read those words in print, shouting testimony to my own foolishness, trying to seem strong and wise but sinking deeper in my own quagmire with each retelling.

Frank Abagnale: "Catch Me If You Can"