{"id":3625,"date":"2024-05-03T07:43:54","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T11:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3625"},"modified":"2024-05-03T07:43:54","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T11:43:54","slug":"sacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/03\/sacked\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacked"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Organized football is not part of my past.

It\u2019s definitely not part of my present or future, either.\u00a0 \u00a0

But that hasn\u2019t kept me off the gridiron.

For a number of years our extended family pursued a Thanksgiving Day tradition. Somewhere between the turkey and the pumpkin pie we would play a rowdy game of touch football out in the yard.

One Thanksgiving I was lined up against my in-laws and my own kids. It was all supposed to be simple and fun. And it was \u2013 for everybody but me. I don\u2019t want to say I become competitive in any kind of sporting endeavor, but there was no way I was going to let my eight-year-old niece catch a pass on my side of the field.

Afterwards Mary Sue shook her head. \u201cI can\u2019t believe the things you were saying and doing\u00a0out there.\u201d

\u201cWhat things?\u201d I asked. I couldn\u2019t imagine what she was talking about.

Unfortunately, it was all recorded on video.\u00a0Later I sat down to watch the game.

I was stunned at how many opportunities I had where I could have been a good sport, where I could have smiled, where I could have passed along a simple word of encouragement. Instead, I always seemed to be yelling. \u201cThe pine tree is out of bounds!\u201d\u00a0\u201cHey, that wasn\u2019t a legal catch!\u201d

As I watched the video I found myself rooting for myself to become a better person.\u00a0\u201cCome on,\u201d I kept thinking, \u201cgrow up! The outcome of this game doesn\u2019t matter. The people<\/em> here are what really matters.\u201d

When the tape ended, I wondered if there was any hope for me.\u00a0

There is <\/em>hope for me. There\u2019s hope for you, too. There\u2019s hope for anyone who takes a long, hard look at his or her own life and feels like a phony.

Our hope lies in receiving the gift of God\u2019s grace.

Do we deserve it? Absolutely not. There\u2019s a grand canyon of separation between deserving something and being worthy of something.

It\u2019s self-evident that I don\u2019t deserve a professional football career. Nor do I deserve a Pulitzer Prize, a Ph.D. in particle physics, or a chance to drive in this year\u2019s Indianapolis \u201c500.\u201d If I did deserve those things, it would be because I had done <\/em>something to earn them.

Worthiness is different. I am worthy of something not because I have done <\/em>something, but because I am<\/em> somebody of incredible value.

Against all reason, I am deeply loved and treasured by a God who will never abandon me. Even when I act like a jerk.

Paul expresses this eloquently in Romans 5:7-8: \u201cWe can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to<\/em>him\u201d<\/em> (The Message).\u00a0 \u00a0

That means there can still be a \u201cnext time\u201d for me \u2013 another chance to play the game, be part of that meeting, or have that difficult conversation in a far more redemptive way.

No wonder we sing that God\u2019s grace is amazing.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Organized football is not part of my past. It\u2019s definitely not part of my present or future, either.\u00a0 \u00a0 But that hasn\u2019t kept me off the gridiron. For a number of years our extended family pursued a Thanksgiving Day tradition. Somewhere between the turkey and the pumpkin pie we would play… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[726],"class_list":["post-3625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-worthiness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3627,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625\/revisions\/3627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}