“Great moments are born from great opportunity.”
It was the opening line of one of the most profound speeches in sports history. Herb Brooks (1937 – 2003), the coach of the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team, encouraged his men in the locker room right before USA faced the Soviet Union at Lake Placid.
I’ve always been a sucker for an underdog story. You may remember it as the “Miracle on Ice.”
Sunday, following their amazing overtime gold medal victory in Milan – with the world watching – Team USA honored the late Johnny Gaudreau by welcoming his children, Noa and Johnny Jr., onto the ice for the official team photograph.
I hope you’re enjoying this moment, friends. Don’t waste it! It’s right and good to celebrate when there’s something good to celebrate. It’s good advice in any season: “Rejoice with those who rejoice” (Romans 12:15).
Few things are more Christlike than a life punctuated by appropriate celebration. Such times of unexpected joy – in whatever manner you and I may get to share in the gold medal moment – lift our weary hearts, lighten our heavy burdens, and fuel us with fresh courage and hope.
I smile when I think of Jesus turning the water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. Jesus tended to R.S.V.P. “yes,” it seems. While He walked this earth, Jesus, the Son of God who’d known fellowship with the angels of heaven, enjoyed dinner parties thrown by tax collectors. We know from Scripture that Jesus was known to have so much uninhibited fun with the people around Him that He was accused of being “a glutton and a drunkard” (Matthew 11:19).
So don’t miss the moment.
The trials and storms and tears of life can certainly take the wind out of our sails. We know that. But to know Christ is to know the rest of the story. The Lord is good, and His goodness can be eclipsed – but not erased. As the startled women learned at the empty tomb: “He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said (Matthew 28:6).”
God’s smiles come in different shapes and sizes.
God’s smiles come from the strangest of directions, and through the strangest of circumstances.
God’s smiles may come in the final hour.
God’s smiles may come in victories which look nothing like victories.
As the Apostle Paul testified: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him” (Philippians 3:8-9).
Because it’s true, that sentiment lives on. After Jaccob Slavin of the Carolina Hurricanes scored his first point in the Winter Olympics, he affirmed: “Jesus is everything. He’s Lord of my life. He’s Lord of all my life because if He’s not Lord of everything, He’s not Lord at all. If the Lord wanted to take hockey away from me tomorrow, I’m still good. My identity is not in this sport. My relationship with Christ is the only thing that doesn’t change.”
How can we not celebrate !?!
So don’t miss a single smile.
That locker-room speech went on to unleash the inconceivable: “If we played them ten times, they might win nine. But not this game, not tonight. Tonight, we skate with them. Tonight we shut them down because we can. Tonight, we are the greatest hockey team in the world.”
Thanks, Coach.
Losses come to every life. But not tonight.
Pastor Charles
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