One of the things that helps to bind the world communities together is sports, especially the Olympics but not limited to those games. I have commented a few times on sports and it may seem that I'm, in some way, opposed to athletic competition but that's not the case. I spent a lot of time at Pitt Stadium and joined the revelers in downtown Pittsburgh after Super Bowl victories. A glass can contain only so much liquid and my glass was probably 30% full of sports at the time as my life was in disarray. I still enjoy the Pittsburgh Penguins but it's limited to the sports sections of newspapers and an occasional third period on radio, or television in the playoffs.
It's not the Penguins I want to talk about, or their playoff chances against the Washington Capitols. Rather it is challenges that show up in most endeavors of our lives . The Pens are down two zip to the Caps right now. This is where my modest following of them seems to perk up. The situation they find themselves in is akin to the pilgrimage we are on in this life.
The Christian is indeed on a journey and this journey is, apart from Scripture, nowhere better described than in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great 19th century London preacher claims to have read this book over 100 times. I believe it for I have been through it often myself, listened to it many times on tape with my wife and son as we made our 45 minute trip to church on Sundays and just bought and watched the film,
a modest and not the most literally accurate but still enjoyable movie. It seems as if the Christian is often down two zip and this is good for there is nothing that takes intensity away as easily as failure to realize the dangers we face. The Penguins may come back and win this series or not but the real excitement to me is the opportunity to for them to display what man, many times, has proven capable of. The determination that many Americans have shown from Plymouth Rock to 9/11 has been granted by God to them for a reason. We may have already fulfilled our purpose in God's plan but in my 59 years, there has been no clarion call as intense for us to press on as their is now. Tyranny has jimmied the lock on the back door and that cold October 1917 breeze is filling the house.
On the surface it does not look good. What should be our chief source of news and information, the mainstream media is pie-eyed over Barack Obama. England followed a similar path with their moderates in the 1930s until a curmudgeonly, portly, bald, parliamentary voice from their radical right, Winston Churchill reminded them of what their history was. Churchill told them, never, never, never give up! The Duke of Wellington may have never said that the Battle of Waterloo was won of the fields of Eton but the point is taken that athletics has built character in many. The British Academy Award Best Picture Chariots Of Fire remains my favorite movie. The efforts of an athlete who acknowledges that his ability is from God, an astronomer who marvels at God's creation through his telescope, a composer who inscribes his works with Soli Deo Gloria, a physician who realizes that it is a God of mercy that provides the scientific knowledge of medicine and a king who acknowledges one that is higher than he is when moderation can be suspended. When moderation, such as is being put forth by many Republicans now, does not acknowledge God and his Word, it is in reality, efforts toward self autonomy.
