Monday arrives with the decimating loss in the playoff games for football fans of Denver, New Orleans, Houston, and Green Bay. Favorites and long shots tasted the bitterness of defeat, the oppressive looming off season in which they will relive their mistakes, fumbles, poor passes, dropped passes, bad calls, and the final scores. Coaches will change, players will get traded or bought, retire, and/or find themselves with new teams or without jobs. For the remaining short time of the football season, those who planned to play will sit.
Competition is stiff, sometimes unpredictable, and always difficult at its best. Giving one's best effort isn't always enough. Balls flip out of hands, are pulled from bodies, zing through the air like missles missing their targets, and can land in the grasp of the enemy. A perfectly orchestrated play goes irreversibly errant. The quickness of one juke, slant, slip, or slide can give the ball away or cause a limb to come undone. The crash of helmets can leave silence or buzzing, stinging, starry moments, or momentary blackness.
Football. Some will never get the attraction. The rest of us will miss it and hope for better teams, look forward to the draft, training camp, and pre-season. We'll hope for a better year, know it'll take more than one to produce a truly good team, but we hang in there because we love the game. Crazy. But we do.
It won't be long and all the hype will quiet. The Super Bowl, Pro Bowl, MVP, and everything else will still. Oh, the talking heads will continue with their prejudiced predictions and irritate devoted fans everywhere, but fans will not be deterred, and the new season will eventually regenerate enthusiasm as men run, pass, catch, and kick that pigskin. The best of the best: the NFL.
Father, thank you for all the amazing gifts you give to mankind. I wish they all knew that you gave them their gifts and talents. Please bless those who do with closer relationships with you and lead those to you who have yet to know you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Into the Fire 
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