You can win the game

It’s coming. I can smell “fall.”

The early morning dew and the robins’ “cluck cluck” tell me to get ready. I love the crickets’ sound and the beauty of the last rose of summer. I’ve already decorated the house.

My husband says, “Leave this up until New Year.” What, and skip Christmas? No way.

This time of the year, football season is just getting under way. I hesitate to say it, but I’m even beginning to like football.

I used to say, “Who is winning, and I don’t care.” Yet with the males of my family, I am giving up.

However, they don’t like to tell me what is happening.

One time my husband told me to watch the play while he went to the kitchen to get a snack. I had no idea what was happening, and so I made up something. When he came back I said, “The backup guy passed the ball to the guy standing in the way, and he threw it to the umpire, and he waved to his wife with his arms up in the air.”

“Thanks, that’s just what happened,” Emmitt said.

I like the statement of our youngest son, who is a big fan. He says, “Life is a touchdown.”

I am beginning to see that football is similar to life. Sometimes we drop the ball.

Life doesn’t go right. Disappointments happen. Illnesses occur. We have more month than money. A friend misunderstands something.

Yet we pick up the ball and go on with life. We are going along pretty well until we get tackled again. We get penalties and have to retreat. Sometimes I want to say, “Here, you can have this crazy ball.”

It is then I realize this world is not our eternal place. Trials do come, but they don’t come to stay. Many of us dwell in the past. Some can’t worry about today because they are worrying about tomorrow. They worry they will be knocked down by dropping the pass or running to the wrong goal post.

The great French philosopher Montaigne said, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.”

Jesus said in Matthew 6:25-26, “Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: For they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?”

We have the greatest Coach of all in this game of life. He has given all of us a chance to run the race, striving to win the prize of eternal life. He will never leave us nor forsake us. His rules for playing the game of life are easily obtained. It is called the “Bible.”

So while we are in this game, we can make many touchdowns. How? Some of the rules to help us win include counting our blessings, living one day at a time and seeing worry as fear trying to conquer faith.

Believe and act on God’s Word. See yourself with God’s help being successful, prosperous and victorious. You will have won the game. Why? Because your Coach is the hope of glory with a love that can never be taken away.

I just love to win. Don’t you?