Christ and our sporting failures

I turned the grand prix off for good just after Lewis went in for his last pitstop. That was really it, the end of five terrible days of English sport. It was pretty hard to take, and i drove to the evening prayer meeting with a heavy heart thinking about goals missed, tries not given and gearboxes that slipped into neutral. Sporting success is by no means the be all and end all of what makes me tick, but it's great to see our sporting heroes do well. It gives us a buzz and makes us feel better about ourselves. Instead a trio of failures greeted us from the front and back pages this morning. Varying degrees of heroism were involved, but they were, nonetheless, failures.

The media, and to a large extent, the public, like to ascribe greatness and glory and even infallibility to our sporting heroes. But this week has proved that they're not. Even Lewis Hamilton, who is, let's face it, a tremendous driver, contributed to his own downfall, even Jonny Wilkinson missed a penalty, to saw nothing of wednesday evening in Moscow. The thing is we need this glory and greatness in our lives, our hearts are made for glory, are made to drink in greatness. And thats why our sporting greats are ascribed these things, because we need it. And thats why we feel so bad when they fail. Thats why we need to have hearts and minds inclined to the one who will never fail.

Jesus is the one for whom our hearts were made. Jesus exudes greatness as He comes to us, and it was for that greatness we were made. Jesus' kingdom will never be rocked, His foot will never be in touch, He will never slip into neutral. So we need to give our hearts and minds to Him. We need to have our affections on Him, not on a group of men who will let us donw one day, if not today. Imagine if our papers' were filled with Biblical exposition, imagine if our back pages were full of missionary endevour. What a nation we would be, if all the passion and affection that was in my heart for sport was turned towards the Lord, there'd be little limit to what God could do...