Adding or Dropping?
Fantasy Football: 2 of 3
In my previous article, I had shared about how I got involved with Fantasy Football and how one of the lessons I learned through playing the game wass that projections do not matter as much as the actual points at the end of the day (please refer to the article entitled “Projections Verses Actuality”). Well, I learned another lesson from Fantasy Football that got me thinking and I thought I would share it with you again.
One of the many features on the Fantasy Football team page is the “Add Players” and “Drop Players” options. The purpose of those two features in self-explanatory; if you have a player on your team that is not performing to your expectation, or if they get hurt and cannot play for the rest of the season, you drop them, hoping to add a player from the “Add Player” feature who can compliment your team, and who possibly, is available. I had my share of adding or dropping players, especially at the most important position, the quarterback position.
Such in not the case in the real world that we live in: We just don’t add or drop players!
There are certain people I would love to add to my team in my life on any given day and there are certain people I would like to drop from my life-what a beautiful world that would be. Needless to say, such is not the case in this Kingdom called Christianity. God has a way of sometimes aligning us with all the players we want to drop in order to teach us a thing or two about life, love, forgiveness, and patience.
Please allow me to describe what kind of players in my life I would love to drop:
¨ Those who are so needy-like a leech
¨ Those who are ungrateful and always complaining-never seeing any good in anything
¨ Those who were born to make your life miserable
¨ Those who are so critical and bitter about everything-always fault finding
¨ Those who are so proud-you can smell them from a distance
Before we get too excited and begin to identify the people that match these descriptions, just wait a second! We could well be the person being described above and we are about to be dropped from the league of Christianity-well, not really- you and I both know that that will not happen even though mankind wants to drop us!
What kind of players do I want to add on my team? Now this is the Fantasy of all fantasy dream teams:
¨ Those who are free-spirited and are not needy
¨ Those who are so grateful and never complaining-always seeing the good in everything and people
¨ Those who were born to make your life on earth like heaven
¨ Those who are so complimentary that it makes you uncomfortable sometimes of how complimentary they are
¨ Those who are so humble-makes you want to do anything for them
Sorry to disappoint you-such a team is only found when you die and you go to heaven and meet up with Jesus. Welcome to the harsh world of reality-where the people you want to drop cannot be drop and the people you want to add, cannot be added because they do not exist-don’t get me wrong, the add-on described above somewhat exist, but not in totality. No matter how loving, peaceful, forgiving, your add-on players are, there is always an opportunity in life when you want to drop them because they have “failed you.”
I believe God takes pleasure in seeing to it that the players we want to drop are a part of our lives to bring about transformation, if we let them. We are “forced” to run back to God and cry, “HELP” because this person is driving me insane. Proverbs 27:17 states, “Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another” (NRS). What better way to be sharpened, but by the people we least care about and most times, the people we care about the most-now that hurts!!!
You see, the dilemma we have in this league is that we look at ourselves as individuals, but God looks at us as one unit, a body. It would be absurd if you heard someone say, “my arm is giving me problems, therefore I am going to drop it and find another arm to add to my body.” If the arm is really bothering us, we will do everything we can, seek medical attention if need be, to bring about the intended relief. Why don’t we do that for each other? Go the extra mile and want to make things work?
Paul, in I Corinthians 12: 1-31 admonishes us on this idea of being one body:
For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit…But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. (verses 12, 13, 24-26)
We are one body-broken, hurting, wounded, critical, bitter, unforgiving, yet we still need each other to survive and make it in life!
Flashback-If I were Jesus, probably the three disciples I would have dropped from my team would have been Peter (talked too much-borderline schizophrenic), James and Andrew (way to selfish-wanting to sit next to Jesus and forget everybody else). However, from those three, two made it into Jesus’ inner circle. Jesus did not drop them-He worked with them, as evidenced by Jesus seeking out Peter after his denial of Him. Look what happened at Pentecost with Peter! If only we could give people a chance in life, what would this world look like?
Granted, some players will have to be dropped from our lives. Case in point-Judas Iscariot (betrayed Jesus), Demas or Alexander (I Timothy 4: 9-15)-Deserted Paul because they “loved this world…and did me much harm.” There was a criteria to dropping them, they deserted the faith. I believe that could be one of the only criteria’s we have in “dropping” people from our lives-deserting the faith-however, praying for them so fervently that they be restored back to the Lord. For all else, we need to pray to God for grace to work with each other and see each person with the eyes of Jesus. In the end, may we be the add-on players who will make a change in the lives of people around us!!!!
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