Summers are fading towards autumn north of the equator, while winter football seasons are wrapping up across Australia and the fans are focused – or even fervent – on who will rise to the top.
Close games will always hold our interest, and devoted fans might pray for a win – even if their suspect piety ignores opponents’ skills and puts any success down to luck – or worse – from cheating.
I have enjoyed years of being a sports chaplain; part of a national team who provide pastoral care to sports heroes from local to Olympic levels.
These heroes have it all, except for privacy in their personal issues, and they appreciate the confidential care on offer.
Fans may not realise how temporary sports careers can be – cut short by injuries or recruiting decisions.
As one football coach tells his new recruits: “You’ll be a person for longer than you’ll ever be a player, so I’m going to help you to be a better person.”
And as the team chaplain, I have watched his young charges mature into leadership material.
If the fans are praying, so are chaplains. At speedways I have always been asked to pray before each meeting.
Not for wins, but for God’s blessing and protection in the risks, or for anything that gets bent out of shape to be metallic or an oversized ego.
After a serious defeat caused one football player to snarl about his chaplain not praying hard enough, the chaplain replied, “If I hadn’t prayed, they might have doubled your score!”
When players reacted after hearing another chaplain praying for their opponents, his explanation was surprisingly positive: “If you win, you will have beaten them at their best, but if you lose, you will have brought out their best efforts to do it.”
This description of bringing out the best applies beyond sport’s identifiable time limits and opponents.
Life’s challenges or opportunities come less predictably, and support may seem harder to recognise.
So it is worth following Jesus’ urge to pray even for our enemies, for then we give God room to change them in ways that we cannot.
For having no favourites, he loves them, and he wants their best as well as ours.
This prayer also gives God room to grow us on the inside, so we may keep helping people around us to see and to release the beauty and potential he has already planted within them.
Noel Mitaxa
On behalf of a church near you, inviting you to explore God’s love
