Winning?

It is football time. I do not know if you watch, but some in my family watch football. We were talking about a game the other day, and the team we wanted to win pulled out the victory at the very end. The contest had gone back and forth. The truth may actually be that my team was not doing very well. You hang on every play. A run up the middle for three yards. Yes! A false start. No! A big pass for 20 yards. Yes! Two incomplete passes in a row. No! The defense gives up a two yard run. Not to bad. The defense sacks the quarterback. Yes! Then they give up a fifteen yard pass. What are we doing?! If my team is playing, I want to go down the field every time and score a touchdown, and I want my defense to cause the other team’s offense to go three and out and punt. That is just not reality for most games.

Noah, Tara, and I were talking about this the other night driving home. How a football game is like life. I really want my life to go smoothly. I would like everything I am trying to go well. I do not want to get sick. I do not want to be inconvenienced. I just want everything I am doing to work and be successful. But that is not my life. Please understand, I am blessed as all of us are, but that does not mean my life does not have a few potholes in the road of life. Sometimes I can go through some tough stuff with family, health, job, etc. and wonder if it is all worth it. Why am I going through this? How will this come out in the end? That is where faith comes in. I trust God that, even when life might not be going the way I want, He wins in the end. It reminds me of what the Holy Spirit wrote through Paul in 2 Timothy 4:6-8. All that matters in the end is the win, and that is found in Christ.