I’m usually pretty reserved guy, but for some reason sports brings out a loud side of me that I can’t control. Especially when it comes to college football and soccer. It happens every year. I go into a season just wanting to watch some good games, but my teams always have a way of getting my hopes up, and before long I’m expecting a championship and then getting disappointed. Let me clarify by saying that I’m a sports fan in the Atlanta area. In my entire life, I have witnessed two championship teams: the 95 Braves and now the 2018 Atlanta United. My life has been a pretty consistent stream of letdowns, whether it’s the Braves, the Bulldogs, the Falcons. It’s not the disappoint or excitement that I’m thinking about today though. It’s the intensity of the emotions.

I get incredibly passionate about my teams. Why? I’m not down on the field. I’m not spending hours daily, honing my skills and working hard to win.

Or am I?

As I thought about it more, I realized that it starts with this desire to win. I want to be part of a winning team. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I think I want to lose at something today.” But it’s more than winning a game or a championship. It’s becoming a part of something bigger than yourself. These athletes work hard day and night to become better in hopes of one day holding that momentary title of “The Best”. And yet, that title so quickly goes away.

Seeing my team win a championship (Unite and Conquer!) gives me hope that the hard work I’m putting in on a daily basis may some day pay off. I work hard every day to educate teenage students. I work hard every day to craft interesting stories that people will want to read. I work hard every day to find ways of showing God’s love to others. When my team wins, it connects to this deeper hope in me that I’m not wasting my time.

And then I think about the scope of eternity, and how all of this isn’t as important as we think. In the end, one championship in America in 2018 really doesn’t mean much in and of itself. What it does do, though, is give me a snapshot into my etermity. Ultimately, we’re in this game of life and death, and I want to be on the winning team. That’s what this Christmas season has had me thinking about. Jesus gave me the way to be on the winning team in the end.

So I don’t give up. I keep working hard every day, knowing that even if I don’t get that immediate payoff during my lifetime, I get to win in the end.

“So we beat on,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Keep your sights ahead of you. Keep striving forward. Or in the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things, They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air”.

Work toward that imperishable wreath, the assured victory that God offers.