This time of year it seems everyone fills out an NCAA bracket and if you don’t, then you at least talk about who you would have chosen if you did. It’s March Madness after all! While, admittedly, I have been known to throw down a dollar or two in the “office pool” (all in fun), I usually fill out an NCAA bracket just to keep my interest in the tournament. I am a football guy. If my Vols are not playing in the tournament and/or there are no Cinderella stories, I quickly lose interest.
This year, I got a bracket through email from hhgregg, the electronics store. If you filled it out and submitted it electronically, you could be in the running for a 55 inch, LED, 3D, Samsung television. No money and no strings attached. After identifying the spot for the TV in my living room, I quickly went to work on my bracket. I did not do a great deal of research in handicapping the games. I just filled it out in about five minutes based on the tried and true “gut feeling” barometer. If you are a basketball fan, you know by now that there were quite a few upsets in the first couple of rounds last weekend. I figured I couldn’t be the only person who had bombed out on a few games, but I had high hopes. The update email from hhgregg hit my in-box Monday morning and I opened it with great anticipation. I was informed that out of 14,796 entries, I was 14,275. Needless to say, I was no longer rearranging the furniture to make room for my new TV.
I could care less about the tournament now. Had my bracket actually been on a printed sheet of paper, I would have taken it in and lined our guinea pig cage with it. After all, spring football practice is in full swing, right?
Isn’t life that way sometimes? We give a half-hearted effort toward something and when we experience failure, we make decisions and broad generalizations: 1) I am not gifted for that. 2) God is leading me in a different direction. 3) I did not have enough support. 4) We don’t have the resources to sustain it anyway. 5) That could never work.
Some of these things may very well be true, but other truths may be present, as well. Perhaps we tried to do it in our own strength without fully relying on God. Maybe we got ahead of Him, not spending enough time in prayer on the front end and short-circuiting the situation. I’m reminded of Galatians 5:16 which reminds us to walk in the Spirit so as to not give into the flesh. When we pursue Christ and the things of Christ in the way Christ would have us to do so, we would not be inclined to quit. The flesh quits. The flesh leads us to sabotage the things we are supposed to strive for.
Whatever you are called to do, gifted to do, led to do by the Spirit of God, do it. Do it in the reality of knowing you are in Christ and Christ is in you.
