And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
- Galatians 6:9
Every sport has “garbage time,” the period at the end of a game when the result is a foregone conclusion and both teams are merely running out the clock. In basketball, it’s the time when you see second-stringers jack up wild three-pointers which the defense only halfheartedly acknowledges. In football, it’s when the winning team suddenly stops passing the ball, instead calling runs up the middle on every down. Even in baseball, if an opponent’s lead is big enough, you’ll see position players sent in to “pitch,” throwing 45 mph lobs that would look silly even in batting practice.
But what you’ll never see is something readily available to the losing team to stop the bleeding: a forfeit. At any time, they could simply wave the white flag and retire to the locker room, ending their humiliation and turning the page to the next game. But for some reason, it is deeply embedded in our understanding of sports that, no matter how lopsided your defeat, you never willingly forfeit. You can make nods to the inevitability of the outcome, but you can never just surrender. Defeat is disappointing, but giving up entirely is unacceptable.
That attitude is a useful one to keep in mind off the field, where life can sometimes feel as one-sided as a scoreboard reading 58-0. We all go through seasons when merely getting out of bed feels like a victory, when it seems like your every attempt to do the right thing blows up in your face. It can feel like giving up is the only thing that makes sense.
But the Bible encourages you to persevere in such periods, to never “grow weary of doing good.” These seasons, it tells us, lead to an eventual harvest, one reaped from what was sown in hard times. The key is to not give up before that harvest comes.
Life is full of “garbage time.” But if you persist through it, following Jesus even when the way is narrow, you will see him turn that trash into treasure.
No comments:
Post a Comment