Almost Christmas

It is almost Christmas and you are exhausted. The presents have been bought and the tree has been up for some time and you have seen all the movies and done all the Christmas things and now you are in the home stretch. Just another night of staying up all night to wrap presents and leave the cookies for Santa and the reindeer food in the snow. The fire will be extinguished and the chimney flu left open as per your eight year olds directions. You have a cigar out back watching the clouds pass over the moon. The world is just about quiet. Almost frozen.

And you hear distantly that people are no longer religious. That Christmas is losing its meaning. And yet you know that this is not true. You are a Christmas warrior and have been training since you were a kid and waited up all night to find your presents waiting for you in the morning. It is the bike under the tree and that ride down the snow covered street. It was staring out the window and wondering how Santa would ever land on the roof.

And now you are playing Vince Guraldi one more time and the fire is burning low and the wife is out on the couch. Exhausted. Exhaustion is something you didnt know about as a kid but as an adult you understand it every well. You mutter under your breath and curse Christmas because it is Herculean in its dimension. And then the day comes and the kids are up early and you are still exhausted but the day comes anyway.

And you go outside and it is brilliant and cold. And you stare at the snow. You  are Chevy Chase again at the end of a long long run. Standing there, muttering...I did it. 

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

Does God Really Care About Football?

Does God really care about some guy named TeBow who is able to bring his team back from certain death in the fourth quarter of the game? I don't think so. I am from Chicago and a Bears fan so let me just put in that disclaimer. But the number of guys giving thanks during games is really quite amazing. It seems every time someone scores they give thanks to the big man. As if God were behind them and their quest for personal glory and millions of dollars.

God might love perfection and this is what athletes aspire too. This starts very early. When I played high school football the solemn moment came when we all took a knee in the locker room and prayed to God to let us stomp the hell out of the visiting team. This was not done lightly. I remember our coach looking up to the steam pipes in our locker room and asking for divine intervention to help us prevail over the other team and protect our quarterback and let our receivers remember their patterns. Amen. Then we proceeded to get slaughtered and we all wondered if our coach just didn't have an in with the big man.

Now Tebow of the Denver Broncos with his Christian first approach is proving once again God does care about football. And maybe for Teebow he does. He is a huge good looking guy who is making millions of dollars. Maybe God likes guys like that to spread the word and maybe he only cares about the pros and the thousands of high school coaches in crappy locker rooms just cant get his attention.

I guess the Packers must really have his ear. Maybe he loves cheese and brats and fishing. I sure wish he had been listening when my coach had asked him to help us because I sure got tired of losing. Maybe God didn't like our quarterback who was pretty bad. Or our running game which used a T formation and we did a lot of goofy stuff like flea flickers and reverses. Maybe he only likes quarterbacks who can run like Tebow. Our quarterback never ran.

 It makes you wonder, doesn't it?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/