“We won!” — as if I had anything to do with it, other than my strong wishes and yelling at the television.  I “feel” like I had some impact.  But if they lose, “they” lost it.  Alabama, my team, on January 7 won the national college football title casting away past demons of loss to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, a team with a great heritage.  The score of 42 to 14 was surprising at least to me.  I expected something like 21 to 17 or 17 to 13.  It caught a lot of people by surprise.

At my house, we had about 18 people, family and good friends, who all rooted for Alabama.  But the main thing was using the game as a time for a party.  Everyone there was a Christian.  Before the game, we prayed a blessing on the great food spread and asked God’s favor for our fellowship.  And if our team had lost, we would have been extremely disappointed…BUT we would not have pouted long. Football is a game.  I know it is big business, even at the college level.  But there are things in life a lot more important than football.  Football can give discipline to the players.  It can keep them off the streets and maybe keep some fans off the streets.  The hold of football on our culture, however, seems to be something deeply ingrained in us.  It holds great attraction and at times can distract us from other things.  We must be careful not to let it consume us while we partake of the joy that it brings, a joy that nonetheless can never match the joy of knowing and serving Christ, who died to take away our sins.