I heart Football

 

I'm a huge football fan. Not just any football though- I mostly just like BYU football. I can't even begin to tell you how excited I was that football season was starting up and I'm super excited that a good portion of our games are on ESPN so I can stream them on my computer. Anyway, Good news for us- we won our first game against Ole Miss. I wasn't super impressed with our QB, but whateves- we still won!

Today in sunday school we were talking about enduring to the end and I was getting a little confused about what it really means to endure to the end. With the BYU football game in my recent memory, this analogy started forming.
Life is like a football game. We all have differing positions that change according to the coach or our surroundings, we rotate in and out of the game, we fumble, we blitz and the most obvious similarity is that we constantly get tackled. I occasionally feel like the game is a never ending series of 10 yard increments that usually end poorly (ie. with your face smashed into the ground with a pile of football players on top of you). At those moments it is easy to think- what's the point of getting up since I'm just going to get tackled and end up on the ground again. That's where endurance comes in.

True endurance has little to do with perfection. A football player who has a high level of endurance is one that never gives up no matter how many times he has been knocked down. Enduring is NOT escaping and avoiding resistance, nor is it never falling down, but rather it is facing our challenges head on and fighting even when it seems pointless.

The fighting however is not pointless. What we can't see from our point of view(whether it be on the ground or in the huddle or even on the line of playing) is that we are slowly working our way down the field to make the touch down.
As a team, our ultimate goal is to score a touch down, but only one person can really make the catch and actually score a touch down. The rest of the team is busy blocking or running or whatever the other players do, but it doesn't really matter. As long as your on the team- it doesn't matter who pulls off the amazing play, you still win. In life- it doesn't matter if you gain the ultimate goal of perfection or not, because Christ has already obtain that goal for you and as long as you remain on His team- you win.
It's just another reason to love football...it totally jives with the gospel! I'm grateful to be on Christ's team and I hope that I can remain worthy and proud to wear His jersey.
One of my friends shared this quote with me and I thought it fit in really well with this analogy. Ezra Taft Benson said this, "The final outcome is certain. The forces of righteousness will finally win. What remains to be seen is where each of us personally, now and in the future will stand in this fight- AND how tall we will stand."