They loved them more deeply than they love video games. They loved them more dearly than their arts and crafts. If a fire was burning down our house, they’d leave all the other stuff in the drawers and reach back to grab them on their way out the door.
I see my children love these things, and I cannot help but feel a certain sort of love for them, myself.
Every so often I hear people kind of balk at the idea that God cares about sports. They sort of mock and deride the guy who’s kneeling on the sideline in prayer before a game. I’m sure the same people would think it’s crazy to see me and my family praying over the events of our life. We pray over cross country and track races. We pray over food. We pray over bedtimes and car rides. We pray over day trips and quizzes and afternoons at the mall.
And I can hear the people saying the same thing I’ve heard them say on the radio and write on the internet, “Look at these people praying over that! Do they really think God cares about this? Do they really think God is spending an ounce of his energy on this? Surely God has bigger things to do than watch that sports team play!”
There are two flaws there. The first one doesn’t really pertain to anything I’ve written here, but it’s just so obvious that I can’t help but rebuttal with it. Here it is:
To say that God has better things to do than to pay attention to something seemingly insignificant on the earth is to misunderstand him. God has an unlimited capacity to pay attention to things. He has an unlimited attention span. It is no more difficult for him to observe a million things going on at ounce than for him to see merely one. You and I are mortals, and we have to focus on a limited number of things at a time. If we try to take in too much, we get overloaded and make mistakes. Thus, it’s perfectly reasonable for me to say, “I don’t have time for a football game right now.” God is not so limited.
There’s not a sparrow that dies in Israel that escape his attention. There’s not a mackerel in the ocean that gets swallowed up by something bigger without God taking note. So to say that God has bigger things on his plate than whatever we’ve prayed about is silly. His plate is big enough to handle all the “bigger things” of a billion worlds like ours, and all the smaller things, too.
But here’s the other flaw. I am important to God. I’m his child. I’m his son. And sure, that brown, leather ball may be fairly insignificant, but it’s not insignificant to God if it’s in my hands.
Every parent who has sat on the sideline of some freezing-cold soccer game knows what I’m talking about. Why are we out there in the wind and the snowflakes, our hands going numb as we fumble with the Tylenol bottle because we’re shivering so much that we feel a tension headache coming on? And it’s only the first half…
Are we out there because we just LOVE youth sports? Are we out there because we just LOVE soccer? Of course not. Have you ever seen six-year-olds play soccer? It’s like a mass of pigeons attacking a piece of bread that’s thrown at them in the park! It’s practically unwatchable!
But there we are, watching it! And why? Because those are our children. And we love them. And we pay attention to the things that matter to them.
And sure, on the one hand, it seems silly that God would care about the little comings-and-goings of our lives. He is God! And we are small people in this world…people of no great significance. Surely his time would be better spent on kings and queens, right? Why would he care about our trip to the store? That’s absurd, isn’t it?
It’s no more absurd than a middle-aged man with a strong affection for three shoddy-looking stuffed animals. If God truly loves us as his children, than he will be present in all that we do. He will be leading us in all that we love. He will be helping or redirecting us in all of our paths, because we are His, and He is ours.
That’s not so strange to me.
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This article originally appeared at ReggieOsborne.com.
