Last Second Comebacks

Skyler Ridley Catches BYU's Game-Winning Touchdown at Houston

I apologize for another sports-related blog entry, but the BYU game inspired me yesterday.  Also BYU football is one of my only good distractions from my exams these days.  For those of you who didn't see it, the game was a real nail biter and BYU won with a touchdown with just over a minute go in the game and then an interception to seal the game.  It was the kind of game that puts gray hairs on my head and that cause me to make half-way serious jokes about BYU football ultimately proving to be my demise some day.  I have a love-hate relationship with games like this.  I hate the stress and the uncertainty of not knowing what is going to happen.  The problem is that sometimes my team loses, and sad as this is to say, I find these moments gut-wrenchingly painful.  Sometimes I wish that I was one of those people who just didn't care and who could walk away.  It seems like my Fall Saturdays would be so much more enjoyable if I just didn't care.

But the funny thing is that as much as I sometimes hate these down-to-the-wire experiences, there's also a part of them that I love.  I'm a fanatic, so I remember most of the BYU games I've seen.  But the wins that you talk about year after year as a fan are almost always the ones where at one point or another it seemed hopeless and yet your team found a way to pull it out in the end.  They are the games where it seemed like nothing had been going right until that one magic drive with little time left on the clock when somehow, some way, your team put the drive together and scored the winning touchdown.

I love these experiences because I believe life is often like that.  We stumble and falter and sometimes things may even seem utterly hopeless, but you go back out there one more time when it seems like everything is on the line and you find success.  And that success is never more meaningful than it is after it seems like it has alluded you for so long.

All my life I've heard that God doesn't care about sports or the outcomes of sporting events, and I generally believe that is true.  His children are playing for both teams and if I've learned anything from seeing games where Peyton and Eli Manning play each other and the reporters interview their parents, it is that no parent enjoys situations where one child has to win and another has to lose.  I don't believe God enjoys situations like that either.  But that said, I do believe that God loves his children and uses our loves to reach us.  I know this sounds crazy, but sometimes a BYU win has helped to make me happy during rough times.  Many a sports team has helped a struggling city through difficult times (if you haven't seen Invincible, you should).  Clearly we should not, like the Romans, exalt the circus to the point that we are consumed by it and don't pay attention to reality, but in each of our lives we need to find something that can divert us for an hour or two.  Whether those diversions be sporting events or the opera, art museums or the movie theater, provided we hold to our standards and do not take diversion to an excess, we will benefit from a few moments away.  And often the things we see or hear there will encourage us to work harder, remembering that last second touchdowns do happen and today might be our day.

Nowhere is this more vital than in our lives as members of Christ's Church, where sometimes we find ourselves down on the scoreboard with time running down.  Like Abraham, when we are "against hope," we need to learn to "believe in hope" and "stagger not at the promise of God through unbelief" (Romans 4:18, 20).  If we will keep believing and keep trying, eventually miracles will happen and blessings will come that will be infinitely more memorable and infinitely more lasting than winning any football game could ever be.  Still, it doesn't hurt to be reminded from time to time that, on certain Saturdays in the Fall, last second comebacks happen for the teams that don't give up when they fall behind on the scoreboard and things look doubtful.

Brett