So I'm watching some of the second NBA playoff game between the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets. If you haven't been watching the NBA this year, you oughta know that the Warriors completed their regular season by breaking the record of most wins in one season ever, breaking a record that had been held by the Chicago Bulls since the 1990s.  Few thought it would ever be broken, meaning the Warriors are at least one of best, if not the best team to ever play the game.  One doesn't get to that level of excellence without a whole lot of hard work, precision plays, deep knowledge of the game, heart, worth ethic (okay, fill in all of the other standard sportscaster-phrases).  It's a complex and intricate thing to be that good, don't you think? 

Well just before the fourth quarter, one of the reporters was interviewing Warriors head coach Steve Kerr (who is part of the Presbyterian missionary family of Malcolm Kerr, if you didn't know).  When talking about challenges the team had had during the previous quarter, he made the statement that I've been leading up to here: "We're at our best," he said, "when we just find the first open guy and keep moving." 

Let me write that again: "We're at our best when we just find the first open guy and keep moving." 

Okay, you've got what is quite possibly the best team to have ever played the game (or pretty darn close), playing some of the most beautiful and expressive basketball out there, and their coach says they're at their best when they play the simplest, not over thinking, paying attention to what's right in front of them, and keeping it going.  It's a pretty remarkable feat to be able to take the most complicated and follow the simplest path to it. 

I remember talking to high school student who had just returned from the big, organized, and orchestrated triennial national Presbyterian youth conference call Triennium.  I asked him how it went, and what he learned while there. 

"Well," he said, "listening to one of the missionaries from overseas, talking about all the church is doing around the world to really help people in need, I finally realized what the gospel is." 

"Really," I said, "what's that?"

"Love God, and then love others.  I think it's that simple."  That's what he said.

Not bad.  So I guess the church is at its best, too, when it just finds the first open guy and keeps moving:  playing the simplest, not over thinking, paying attention to what's right in front of us, and keeping it going.