WHO SAW THIS COMING?
Man, I must admit this morning that I am less than thrilled with the outcome of last night’s Super Bowl. For quite some time, I have not been a fan of the New England Patriots, and I was more than a little excited when Atlanta went up by 25. And yet, even with that kind of lead, there was something in my gut that told me this game was far from over. Something within me said there was too much time on the clock for people to get too excited.
When we got down to the Patriots’ last possession of regulation, I told Erin that Atlanta had given Brady too much time on the clock. Sure enough, here we go. 14 points in a little more than eight minutes of regulation and overtime and New England gets ring #5.
What was it that led me to say to Erin that the Falcons left too much time on the clock? The body of experience that Tom Brady and Bill Belichick had laid out over the last fifteen years pointed to the fact this would go down to the wire, and chances were good that if they did not get the win, they were at least going to make you sweat it, fighting to the very end.
In our journey as Christian disciples, we, too, can get very frustrated and feel defeated when the circumstances of life weigh us down. Those times where we have such a feeling of despair and futility, just ‘knowing’ there is no way things will ever get better. Circumstances where we fell, if not believe, our situation is hopeless. These feelings are not new amongst the people of faith – throughout the bible we see example after example of God’s people feeling as though they hit their limit, questioning whether or not God had abandoned them.
However, the Christian witness throughout the ages has always seen, and in quite extraordinary and unexpected ways, that we worship a God of deliverance and redemption from the most dark of circumstances. From Genesis through Revelation, and through the witness of the saints in two millennia since, we know that God is always with us. Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the highest holy days of the year (along with Christmas Eve/Day), point us to the God whose essence is the unlikely comeback under the most ‘impossible’ of situations.
Think last night’s Super Bowl was a great comeback? It was, but pales in comparison to the comeback of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Praise be to God!
Have a most blessed week!
Grace and Peace, Lamar