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Last week, I told you about the two guys from London who sat behind me at the Marshall game. Listening to them trying to figure out the subtle nuances of American football played Volunteer style certainly added another level of enjoyment to the game. At half-time of that game, the Pride of the Southland was joined by a drum and bagpipe corps from Nashville. They played “Amazing Grace.” On a soaking wet, dreary day, my favorite band was playing my favorite hymn in one of my favorite places. Yes, it was a religious experience. An experience so deeply woven into the culture of East Tennessee that my friends from London could not fully grasp its significance. They were startled a bit when I closed my eyes and gently swayed while the hymn was being played.
Religion and football, like religion and so many other things, often get mixed together in our part of the world. In fact, Neyland is one of the few stadiums I know about in this country where audible prayers are still offered before a football game. At times, that can be a sweet expression of who we are, and at other times it can draw boundaries that define for us who is in favor and out of favor with God.
Most of the prayers that I have heard before football games have been rather fair-minded prayers. They have tended to ask God for physical protection for the players and also for a spirit of good sportsmanship to be evident during the game. My experience has been that those who pray pre-game prayers put their requests in their own words. Something a little unusual happened at prayer time before the Florida game. The Church of God preacher recited the Lord’s Prayer.
I was intrigued by his praying and drawn into the fervency of his voice and the familiarity of the words. After he finished reciting the Lord’s Prayer, he added a phrase from deep within his heart, “...and God bless the Volunteers.”
You might be thinking only in East Tennessee would a preacher pray a prayer asking God to bless his team without also asking God to bless the other team as well. However, I am reasonably sure that similar prayers are said all over the South Eastern Conference. It is our nature as a human being to want God on our side and to ask for divine assistance in making our side victorious.
You know the outcome of the Florida game. So you also know that God either chose not to bless the Vols or God was more intent on doing other things.
I tend to lean toward God was doing other things, like reconciling humanity to Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ. As comforting as it might be to think that God’s a Volunteer fan, the truth of scripture is that God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son so that all — all the Volunteers, all the Gators, all the Dawgs and even the Crimson Tide — may have eternal life.
There is an “allness” to our following Christ that will not let us exclude those who are not like us. Nor will it allow us to expect blessings from God that God is not just as willing to pour out on others. In fact, it goes with following Christ that when we see those who look unblessed, God is able to use us and make us a blessing.
If our eyes are open, we cannot help but see that we live in a world that needs to be blessed. Every year, nearly 11 million children die before they reach their fifth birthday. Three billion people live on less than $2.00 per day, while 1.3 billion live on less than $1.00 per day. According to Globalrichhlist.com the people in well-to-do countries were 30 times better off than those in the countries where the poorest 20 percent of the world’s people lived in 1970. By 1998, this gap had widened to 82 times.
That kind of disparity could well be the result of Christians who pray for God to bless only them and then act in ways that do not see the need to be a blessing to others. That may or may not be an appropriate attitude for an autumn Saturday afternoon in a college football stadium, but it keeps those who seek to follow Christ at a great distance from the One who said, “Let the little children come...all of them...orange, red, yellow, purple, black and old gold and crimson.”
May God bless the Volunteers and everyone else just as well.
Joy and peace,
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