Cosmic Football Games

I still remember plugging in a bulky VHS tape so I could watch the game, courtesy of my college football–loving mom.

It’s not that I was such a great fan. I went to school out of state and didn’t particularly have a dog in the fight for the annual Sunshine state rivalry. I just rooted for the school my family members had attended if I happened to catch a game on TV. But now I had moved about as far from home as geography allowed.

They didn’t show much Florida football in California, so my mom taped the big game to include in her next spectacular care package. It was a “taste of home” gesture.

I already knew the final score. A tie. (Back in the days before overtime.)

You’d think that would spoil the fun.

Instead, it made for an odd dynamic where my emotions and my fact-brain sat on separate couches.

At halftime, my team was down 24-3. And it got it worse. The scoreboard read 31-3 as the fourth quarter began. Sounds like the kind of game where the fans leave early. When offense has been that difficult for 75% of the contest, how do you recover?

I may have changed the channel if it were live.

But I knew the final score.

I just couldn’t see how a team in these straits was going to pull off 28 points before the clock ran out.

“There’s no way. It’s too many touchdowns. They’re facing a strong defense and haven’t even made one touchdown this whole game. It’s not gonna happen.”

“They don’t lose,” my brain kept replying condescendingly.

After every added touchdown, my emotions and brain went another round.

“It’s still not going to be enough. How can they possibly score that many points in the time remaining? They don’t even have possession of the ball right now.”

“They don’t lose. You already know the end.”

One more interception. One more touchdown. One more extra point. A 31-31 tie that felt like a win to one team and a loss to the other.

I thought about that game this week because I feel like these days, I’m living my own version of it. Don’t you? The scoreboard just doesn’t look good right now.

Whether my own personal stuff or the heart-breaking world stage or family, friends, and groups in between—it feels like we’re taking one loss after another. Grieving one loss after another.

I’m tired of having no traction. I’m tired of my schedules and opportunities being erased, my hopes deleted. I’m tired of funerals and farewells that are not offset by births and new adventures. I’m tired of the heaviness we all seem to be under. I’m tired of righteousness taking the hit. I’m tired of losing.

That’s real. We need to feel it, grieve it, see it as it is.

But stopping there will win neither football games nor cosmic spiritual battles.

I wonder what kept those boys in the game until the momentum—and the scoreboard—shifted. What kept them from crumpling in resignation as the fourth quarter began? I ask because we need their grit.

We have the benefit of Scripture telling us the end—the immense, everlasting, redemptive, victorious King judges evil, saves His people, and reigns forever. So I try to remind myself again. But it often feels like the same disconnect between my present emotional state and my fact-brain as when I watched the nail-biter game: “I just don’t see how we get from here to there with the win.” We are worn down till we lose the fire to attempt another drive. Tempted to just take a knee.

The scenes of the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7 are some of those pictures that I “choose to lean into” with the parts of myself that can do such things. I’m inspired by the conquest of the Son of Man and His indisputable reign. He wins. We know the final score. That helps part of me.

But I’m also glad that the same chapter acknowledges the reality of the enemy’s strategy that weighs on us now and in days to come: “He will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One…” Daniel 7:25. Worn down. No, the inclination to give up at fourth quarter is not just due to our laziness or poor sportsmanship. This is war.

But I still want to know how we find the grit to do more than stand around on the field till the game ends.

The same chapter in Daniel contains some fascinating references to time even while it extols the Ancient of Days. I wonder if our perspective on time holds one facet of the key to endurance.

It’s one thing to say that three quarters have past, and we don’t have “enough” time left to make any difference. It is another to say, “As long as there is still time on the clock, we have time for another play. This game is not over while the clock still beats.”

Interestingly, God’s enemy wants to change the times, the chapter says. And oh, don’t we know how he loves to sneer “Game over” to our individual stories and overarching historical sagas when God instead says, “I’m not finished yet.”

I’m sure the “time, times, and half a time” Daniel describes do not refer to the first three and a half periods of a football game. But on some level, it’s got to feel that way. The good news is that a football game has a full four periods. It doesn’t stop at the three and a half mark.

And neither does the more significant cosmic event.

“I kept looking, and that horn was waging war with the saints and overpowering them until the Ancient of Days came and judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the Highest One, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom” Daniel 7:21-22.

Wherever we may be in human history, the clock hasn’t run out yet. I want to play with the heart of a fourth-quarter champion who gives it all I’ve got until the Keeper of the Clock and the Keeper of the Score and the Triumphant Tie-Breaker shouts, “Good game! We win!”

It will make the celebration all the sweeter.