The Only Way

We have just closed out the football season with another Superbowl. Isn’t it amazing that coaches and teams spend weeks in preparation for the big day?  They watch films, study playbooks, and talk about their strategy in order to find the ultimate secret that will result in victory.   However, when the final whistle is blown signaling--game over, what is it that we hear? As is the case with most games commentators, coaches, critics and thousands of fans talk about the one play that decided the outcome--it’s called the game changer. Maybe it was a run, a pass, or going for it on fourth and one. When I think about it the same could be said in relation to our salvation. Of all the things Jesus did, his victory came down to one play—the garden of Gethsemane. You might say he was on the fifty-yard line and things could have gone either way. But at that moment Jesus decided to go for it; the reason, that was the only way. He refused to call upon the aid of angelic offensive linemen and refused to punt the ball into the hands of someone else. No, he called the play; “Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me, but not my will let yours be done.” That call was the game changer people have been talking about for centuries. It allowed him to win victoriously. The great preacher Clovis Chappell tells a story in his book “Questions Jesus Asked” that helps solidify my point.  “A few years ago a father was plowing in the field while his two small boys were playing nearby.  Suddenly he looked up from his work to see a huge dog coming toward the boys.  He recognized at once that the dog was mad.  Therefore he rushed to meet the oncoming beast, urging his boys to take refuge in a cotton bin.  Thus the boys were saved, but the father was bitten from his face to his feet. So completely was he poisoned that medical skill could do nothing for him.  But I am told that as the end drew near, in moments when he was free from delirium, he would smile into the face of his wife and say: “Don’t you take it too hard.  Remember that the boys are safe and that there was no other way.”  By his sacrifice, Jesus stayed in the game took the beating and won. The win was more than a game and more than a single battle; he won our future. Although it results in winning many question the decisions of a player or a coach because in the heat of the moment they do not understand. Not dissimilar was the experience of Jesus, yet He called the play because that was the only way.