Lent 21 - Mercy

As a sports fan I find myself conflicted sometimes in my own opinions.  One thing I struggle with is the concept of "prevent defense" in sports.  When your team is winning and they are doing great and then because they have the lead they change to a "hang on the the lead" mindset.  This so often lets the other team back into the game and I do not want that to happen.  I want my team to win! 

On the other hand I have experience some things in sports that cause me to shake my head in shame.  I was at a basketball tournament and the game was down to the last minute or so and one team was up by 10 points.  The game was essentially over.  The team that was behind had conceeded the game in all reality and was no longer fouling to try and stop the clock.  Then all of a sudden the winning team started pressing and became very active.  They ended up shooting and making a 3 pointer and the end of the game to extent the point differencial.  Come to find out the team's coach figured out that the tournament was going to be decided by points and so they needed to beat the team by more points.  I became pretty judgemental at that moment about the need to rub it in for the cause of a trophey.  

We live in a culture that is competitive. We love to compete and just about everything in life is a competition.  I have taught a leadership development course for 6th graders and in that course we played a game called "Shoulder Tap."  The instructions of the game were to have a partner who you grasped hands like an arm wrestle.  We than told the students that the goal was to count how many times you could tap your united hands on the other person's shoulder.  As soon as we started the minute countdown the struggle and competition was on and most kids only got a tap or two in the minute.  We than told the students that we did not say it was a competition and demonstrated that if the two people worked together that they could get 50 to 100 sholder taps.  We are so much better when we work together.  

Jesus said, "God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy."