rich in mercy

March Madness Yet Again??

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

valpo

I have to confess that I’m not quite the sports fan that I used to be. Maybe it’s the absurd salaries and extreme lack of loyalty to anything other than the almighty dollar. Who knows?

I do know that when March rolls around, the sports fan in me awakens from hibernation and comes alive. Why? March Madness, i. e. The NCAA Basketball Tournament.

I’ll fill out my brackets and wait. Usually by the second round, my brackets have crashed and burned. Then I start rooting for the underdogs.

It seems like every year there’s a team that makes it further in the field than they should. A team that overachieves and who gets billed as the next Cinderella, the next David to knock off a Goliath.

I love those stories because I remember that I, too, was once an underdog with no hopes and no chance at all of winning. That’s my take on Ephesians 2.

But God who is rich in mercy (how I love that phrase) found me and rescued me and put me on His winning team.

Maybe one day one of those long-shot mid-major teams will finally win it all. I hope so. But I’m thankful to be reminded on a daily basis that in Christ, I’ve already won. I’m more than a conqueror.

So bring on those brackets this year. I’m ready.

For the Underdogs

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

valpo

The sports fan in me always love this time of year. It’s called March Madness for a very good reason. All the NCAA conferences are holding their championships, and while the usual suspects normally win these kinds of things, there’s always a chance that some lowly team will come out of nowhere and win 4 games in 4 days to get the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament field of 68.

Even if the team has played badly all year, they can suddenly catch fire and win. I saw a documentary about the 2008 SEC tournament when Georgia came out of nowhere to win 4 games, including 3 in a span of 30 hours to win the tournament.

I love underdogs, mostly because I used to be one. And so did you.

The Bible says that once we were without hope, alienated from God, strangers to the promise, and headed nowhere good. In basketball terms, we were nowhere close to getting an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. We had pretty much lost every game by a large margin.

But God. The best parts of the best stories always start that way.

But God, being rich in mercy, made us alive.

We went from hopeless underdogs to champions in the moment it took God to make us alive. He made us more than conquerors through Jesus and promised to crush the enemy underneath our feet. Kinda like the way Vanderbilt beat Kentucky earlier today (with apologies to any UK fans reading this right now).

God has a heart for the underdog. The orphan, the widow, the outcast, the downtrodden, the poor in spirit. All those who know they are headed for certain defeat and know it will take a miracle to get a win. In fact, God blesses those who bless the underdog, who look after those who can’t look out for themselves and speak up for those who can’t speak up for themselves.

Come  Sunday, I will fill out my brackets and hope for the best, but if all the underdogs win, I’ll be okay with that.