March Madness
I’ve filled out several college basketball tournament brackets the past few days getting ready for the NCAA college basketball tournament that starts on Thursday. I love this time of year. I have my Virginia teams that I root for. Unlike Shawn I will root for UVA, VCU and VA Tech. I also have some teams I definitely root against (best not to mention them so I don’t get any angry phone calls). I get everyone in my family to fill out a bracket, even Sophia. I’m not sure Sophia really cares, but Lydia flips a coin 63 times and we write Sophia’s picks into the tournament bracket. We keep track of all the game winners so that at the end the person who has picked the most wins gets to choose where we go to dinner. The last few years we’ve been going to the Mexican restaurant, (I’ll let you figure out for yourself who’s been winning our family challenge.)
The thing that makes the tournament so much fun and so exciting is the suspense of winning and losing. It is why they call it March Madness! If your team wins you get to go on and play again, if you lose, your season is over and you go home defeated. Finally on April 3rd a single champion will be crowned.
As much as I enjoy the tournament, I’m so glad my life is not like that. We all face those days when it feels like we have lost at the game of life. But for those who follow Christ, losing at life is never the end of the story. With Christ, there is always another chance. When we read the gospel story it seems as though Jesus faced defeat after defeat. Rejected, betrayed, arrested, tried, crucified, dead, defeated, season over, go home and forget about him. And yet even when all seemed lost, God was not done and on Easter God declared victory and raised Jesus to new life.
There are so many times when I’ve felt defeated and felt like I’ve lost at life. I’ve screwed up. I’ve made bad decisions. I’ve hurt those I care about. I’ve failed to be successful. I’ve said things I shouldn’t have said, done things I shouldn’t have done. I haven’t done things I should have done. People and circumstances have gotten the best of me and at the end of the day I’ve lost the game I was trying to win. I suspect we have all faced those days when things didn’t go our way and we lost. Sometimes we just go on home and cry ourselves to sleep. But during March Madness I am reminded that even on the days I lose, God is there to help pick me back up. And God says to me and God says to you, “You’re still on my team and tomorrow there’s another game to play, so get ready, because you’ve got a chance to be better tomorrow than you were today.”
It’s March Madness. It’s about winning and losing and winning again!
