{"id":4207,"date":"2024-11-21T07:17:18","date_gmt":"2024-11-21T12:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4207"},"modified":"2024-11-21T07:20:01","modified_gmt":"2024-11-21T12:20:01","slug":"national-pastime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/21\/national-pastime\/","title":{"rendered":"National Pastime"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

Sports attendance, sports betting, and sports talk represent one of the most dominant realities on the American scene.\u00a0

It\u2019s all sports all the time.\u00a0

Right?<\/em>

To quote a popular sports adage, \u201cNumbers never lie.\u201d\u00a0

Let\u2019s add together the most recent regular season total attendance figures of America\u2019s four major professional sports leagues:

Major League Baseball (the unchallenged leader)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a070,747,000 fans
National Hockey League (a surprise 2nd<\/sup> place)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 22,873,000 fans
National Basketball Association (and declining)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 22,538,000 fans
National Football League (highest avg. per game)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 18,911,000 fans

The grand total of 135 million-plus includes a generous number of repeaters \u2013 the millions of fans who attend multiple games (like season ticket holders), and\/or cross over to attend events featuring any of the other three sports (think for instance of fans in the Boston area who in the space of a year might pay to see the Celtics, Bruins, Red Sox, and Patriots).\u00a0

Here\u2019s the eye-opener:\u00a0According to the Gallup organization, 135 million is less than<\/em> the total number of Americans who will attend a worship service, Bible class, mission venture, or small spiritual gathering of some sort during one average week <\/em>in the United States.

Professional sports may dominate water cooler conversations, require local media outlets to dispatch entire news teams to other cities, and prompt governors to make goofy bets with each other.

But the real story is the quiet, ongoing involvement of a huge slice of our population in some kind of faith-based community.

Is the outcome of a particular game a matter of life and death?\u00a0It only feels that way when the kicker on your favorite team is lining up to attempt a winning field goal.

Curing cancer; eradicating poverty; conquering racism; ending sex trafficking; eliminating contagious diseases; restoring marriages; foiling terrorist threats; preventing suicides; educating young girls all over the world; welcoming God\u2019s grace.\u00a0These are real matters of life and death.

Sports are a blast.\u00a0But all too often they are just a distraction from things that really make a difference.

So does that mean that God ignores the fervent prayers of millions of fans during the last seconds of a big game?

We can be sure that God is hanging onto every word of our prayers.\u00a0In a way we can never fully comprehend, at least in this world, God is not on one team\u2019s \u201cside\u201d \u2013 even though players who point to heaven after scoring a touchdown seem to express a hope that he might be.

Let\u2019s put it this way:\u00a0If the quarterback of the team playing my Indianapolis Colts somehow ends up eating a sketchy bowl of clam chowder the night before he takes the field, I wouldn\u2019t say that was an answer to prayer.

But then again, you never know.\u00a0


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Sports attendance, sports betting, and sports talk represent one of the most dominant realities on the American scene.\u00a0 It\u2019s all sports all the time.\u00a0 Right? To quote a popular sports adage, \u201cNumbers never lie.\u201d\u00a0 Let\u2019s add together the most recent regular season total attendance figures of America\u2019s four major professional sports… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[493],"class_list":["post-4207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4207","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=4207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4209,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4207\/revisions\/4209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}