Heroes

The day began with me lacing up my Puma Clydes...Vintage Puma Clydes I might add. Clyde. The name that brought forth some of the first passion of my young soul. Clyde. "Watch Clyde glide" That's how I started the poem..."Watch Clyde glide." A young basketball fanatic couldn't fathom a better opening line. Clyde...Walt Frazier (sorry yungin's who think I'm talking about Clyde the glide Drexler...much later!). Walt Frazier the 6'4" all-star guard of the World Champion New York Knicks of the NBA. Clyde...dressed in a mink trench coat, driving around in a Rolls Royce. All-defensive team, all-around champion, all around hero. Puma was so enamored with Frazier that they asked him to design a shoe of class and color...Clydes. I must have owned 10 pair! Imagine my excitement, when, on a recent trip to NYC with my daughter, we passed a Puma store and there in the window, for the first time in 30 years, was a pair of Clydes. I got me a pair...then I mail ordered another! After all, he was my hero. So I started my day lacing up my Clydes. Now that the day is almost done, I realize I'm winding down with another hero. I just started a biography of Francis Schaeffer, An Authentic Life, by Colin Duriez. Schaeffer...not known for fashion (he wore silly looking knickers all the time...huh, knickers, Knicks, Knickerbockers...hmmm, that's wierd!), no mink coats, certainly no Rolls Royces, but my hero...because his writings (his heart and mind) saved my faith. At a time when no one in evangelicalism seemed interested in taking my doubts seriously, Schaeffer, through his writings, did seem to hear me...and he saved my faith. I can't wait to meet him one day to tell him. But...as heroic as both Clyde and Schaeffer are in their own way in my life...I am reminded, there is only One Hero...only One that draws forth passion from my soul; only One who Authors and Saves my faith...Jesus...and He is enough.