Fumble Drill

It will come as a surprise to no one reading this that I am a football fan.  Baseball is actually my favorite sport, but football comes in a solid second.  Leave aside any issues about NFL players protesting and so forth.  I’m not under any illusions that professional athletes are saints in athletic uniforms.  I’m just talking about enjoyment of the actual game as it’s played on the field.  I really enjoy watching it, whether it’s high school, college, or professional football.

Because I like sports, I sometimes make sports analogies.  One of the things I was thinking about recently was the fumble.  Fumbling the ball is one of the worst things you can do in a football game.  It doesn’t matter where on the field it happens, it’s always bad.  If you’re near to scoring, you give up a chance to score.  If you’re near the other team’s goal line, you give them a chance to score.  And either way, you lose the ball.  There’s just nothing good that happens as a result of a fumble.

Except.  Except that sometimes, you recover your own fumble.  Sometimes you even advance the ball forward.  Once in a while, you’ll even see someone fumble, recover the ball, and run it in for a touchdown.  If you can recover your own fumble, there’s a chance that something really good can happen.  And even if it’s not really good, at least it’s not as bad as it could’ve been.  Recovering your own fumble is almost always a good thing to do, and it is always preferable to not recovering your fumble.

So how does that relate to our lives?  Well, think about this:  how many times do you mess up?  How many times do you make mistakes?  How many times do you say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing?  Sometimes it’s an accident, sometimes it’s on purpose, but we all do it all the time, don’t we?  Well, those are fumbles.  Messing up, making mistakes, saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, those are all fumbles.  And they’re always bad.  There’s nothing good that happens as a result of these things.

Except.  Except that there’s a way we can recover these fumbles.  That way is to ask for forgiveness.  We can go to the people affected by our mess-ups and our mistakes.  We can go to the people we’ve hurt by saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing.  We can ask them for forgiveness.  If we do that, it’s like recovering our fumble.  There’s a chance that something good can happen, like being forgiven.  There’s a chance that something really good can happen, like the people we’ve hurt respecting us more because we were willing to admit to what we’d done and ask to be forgiven for it.  And even if that doesn’t happen, the situation will still not be as bad as it was before.  Asking for forgiveness is almost always a good thing to do.  It’s much preferable to not asking for forgiveness.

We should ask God for forgiveness, too, of course.  And we know that if we’re sincere, God will forgive us.  Even if we can’t recover our fumbles with humans, we can always recover our fumbles with God.  And while it’s important to ask for forgiveness from those we’ve hurt, it’s even more important to ask for God’s forgiveness.

So what fumbles have you committed this week?  Whatever they are, recover your fumbles.  Ask for forgiveness.  It will make a bad situation turn out much better.