Putting It All On the Line

When Men Put It All On The Line

It is said that playing football is not the most difficult thing that collegiate athletes do at any of the Service Academies. They put their lives on the line for us around the world...and protects the freedom for me to even write this blog. 

What I saw this evening in the Army/Navy game made me stop and wonder.  First--should it be called the Navy/Army game after the streak of wins went to the people in their whites and not the grey uniforms.  And watching Trent Steelman, star West Point QB, fumble and then crash emotionally on the field was quite startling.  He was inconsolable in the arms of his coach, the commanding General of West Point and the coach of Navy who sought him out.  I give him his due that I am clueless for what it meant to him and his team to lose that game.  They had only won 2 games all season to Navy's 7.  However, anyone who saw the meltdown had to wonder if too much had been put on the line--and what there was that prevented him from going out with head up. Yeah, pretty painful beyond words to fumble the game away on the 10 yard line.

So let's give him every break in the book. But, let's ask ourselves about times we get overly invested in things going our way.  When we lose out, do we literally come away losing everything?  I have seen losers go out winners because of the way they lost--heads up, gave it the best shot, nobody died. I think the point is knowing how to draw the line between who we are and what we do and do not do.  When the line erases between identity and achievements (losses)--then we become what we do and cannot do.  It is the old "A or F" syndrome--unless I get the A, then I am an F student.  Heard that before.

What does not break you--makes you.  Heard that one?  Or rather, have you lived that one out?  It is only possible if the line between who you are and what you do is kept flexible enough so that when you fall short, you don't go off the cliff with it. 

Back to Steelman.  Can't help the play on words--"Steel-Man."  Somehow we need to be made out a substance which can be shaped in life and not broken by it.  Eventually, even steel rusts, twists and breaks under pressure and heat.  There's a very deep teaching from the biblical world.  We are created  "imago-dei"--in the image of God.  It does not make us gods--but the image is something of God in which "all things are made new" (Revelation 21) and where....

those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
   they shall walk and not faint. 

(Isaiah 40:31)