I’m a bit of a sports junkie. I am captured by games and competitions when there is a lot on the line or when an athlete is asked to push herself to the brink. I love the Olympics, the WNBA, and the World Series. I watch Wimbledon, the Masters, and Formula 1 racing. In fact, as I write this article, I am casting an occasional eye at the television as Randy Johnson of the San Francisco Giants attempts to become only the twenty-fourth pitcher in major league baseball history to win 300 games.
Our world is full of commentary on sports and athletes. Games are analyzed and athletes’ performances are scrutinized by newspaper writers, game analysts, and bloggers. If you examine the discourse carefully, you will find a lot of talk about excellence and mistakes. In fact, watch any sports highlight show on ESPN and you will see that the entire world of sports is basically categorized into excellence and mistakes.
One of our local stations likes to do Top Ten Best and Worst highlight packages. Best goals. Worst fumbles. Best comebacks. Worst performance when athletes choke.
Athletes constantly strive for perfection. They want to pitch the perfect game, beat the Olympic record, score the hole-in-one, be perfect from the line, get the shutout. But what happens most nights is they give up the home run, finish fourth, put the ball in the sand trap, miss the key free throw, or let in a fluky goal. Variety and the element of surprise keep us watching.
All of life is like this. The world is full of goodness and sin which keeps us all alert. We’ve all seen the good marriage end, the once rich lose his fortune, the once healthy fall ill, the once happy grow sad. If someone were to make a highlight reel of my life, there would be plenty to choose from to make a series of Top Ten blunders and gaffes, that’s for sure. Recently I’ve been playing around with this concept. If someone were to make a Best of highlight reel of my day, would I act differently?
Sound corny? Try it. Pretend that every night there will be a Top Ten Best of (fill in your name) played on your local news. Would you act differently? Top ten friendly faces of Ron. Top ten moments where Ron listened well to people. Top ten moments when Ron shared his love for Jesus. If you were to really scrutinize your own daily walk, would you want the world to see your Top Ten highlight package?
What if someone were to make a daily Worst of top ten list?
I often wonder what sports will be like in heaven. Everyone will be perfect. Winning won’t matter. Performances will no longer have degrees of excellence. Would we be interested in such a sports world, when everyone in the foursome scores a hole-in-one? The sportswriters would soon grow bored!
Yet that’s where we’re headed—a world where all our highlight reels will be perfect. Sounds a bit corny, I know, but Isaiah 11 gives us a glimpse of this world. Read the entire chapter but dwell on the words of Isaiah’s vision of heaven in verses 6-9 (NLT):
In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together;
the leopard will lie down with the baby goat.
The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion,
and a little child will lead them all.
The cow will graze near the bear.
The cub and the calf will lie down together.
The lion will eat hay like a cow.
The baby will play safely near the hole of a cobra.
Yes, a little child will put its hand in a nest of deadly snakes without harm.
Nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,
for as the waters fill the sea,
so the earth will be filled with people who know the Lord.
To end our devotional time today, listen to Hillsong United’s latest release entitled “You Hold Me Now,” which gives us one of the most beautiful visions of heaven I’ve heard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx2-Inc8TkA.
Blessings on your Top 10 Best of highlight package today. God will be watching it tonight!
Ron DeBoer is vice-principal at Eastwood Collegiate Institute and author of Questions from the Pickle Jar: Teens and Sex (http://www.faithaliveresources.com/pickle). He can be reached at rd2@queensu.ca
This article appears in the christian journey column on the New Living Translation website. For more information,
or to visit the NLT site, please click here.
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