Football Season

I love football. I love a great play - a great pass or a wow of a touchdown. I don't get everything that happens so I ask my son and husband a lot of questions. But I especially love watching my grandson play football.

Calvin (grandson age 14.5) played his last freshman football game on Friday night.  It wasn't a good game to end the season on. They lost significantly. But Calvin played a great game so it was still a fun game for me to watch. It didn't matter to me that they lost. It mattered to Calvin. He was crushed.

A freshman football game isn't like an NFL game where you have television commentators, video replays and commercial time outs. There are volunteers running the line markers with slightly paid coaches, and referees dressed in black and white but with questionable certification, or so it seemed this night in particular.

I don't know if the other team's players were just way better, bigger and faster. I don't know if our coaches just weren't calling the smart plays we needed to win. I don't even know if the referees' calls were slanted to the home team or not. I know our quarterback threw several passes that were way off mark and their team seemed to know our every play. Bummer. And we never knew what they were going to do, it seemed.

So our players were sad and disheartened. They did their best and still lost and next year they play on junior varsity, never getting to erase the loss by a win. These boys will ache for a while then gradually move on to the next sport season and strive for wins there.

Paul reminds us that all things are considered loss compared to what is really important - knowing Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:8-9 NIV: "What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ --the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith."