Tom's Message: When You Expand Your Bracket...
Can you believe it's here?! The daffodils are blooming! I even saw tulips Monday!
This can only mean one thing!
March Madness!
You know it! And...Go, Vols!
The NCAA basketball tourney is when we go from the Sixty Four Best to the Sixteen Even Better Than That ("Sweet!"), to the Four Almost the Most Best ("Finally!"), to the Best of the Best!
You know how folks fill out the bracket (it's kind of a flow chart of the schedule of all the games) to predict, game by game, who will beat the other and move on to play other winners 'til we make it to the championship game?
I know we might feel confident that our guesses are pretty good (I picked the Vols over St Peter's!) but I read the other day that the chances of a person who knows something about the teams, making all the picks that wind up with a "perfect bracket”… or when it's all said and done, you picked all the winners…is one in 9,223,372,036,845,775,808!!
Or, to round it off, one in 9.2 quintillion!!
That right! Quintillion! With a “Q”!
It’s because probably no one (except maybe Pottsie!) ever dreamed that Oakland University (his Alma Mater) coulda done what they did last night!
That’s what makes sports so exciting!!
No one has ever picked a perfect bracket because...
whether Villanova beating Georgetown in the NCAA Final game in 1985…
or Broadway Joe and the Jets over the Colts in Super Bowl lll…
or the ’69 Miracle Mets over the Orioles in five games…
…you never really know for certain who's gonna win!
Theologically, tho…
There is One Who always knows!
He knows Who will win...
He knows who will lose...
And He also knows when a “loss” will prove to be a “win”!
He knows exactly how many times someone who is soooo broken-hearted because they got put out of the Big Dance in the first round…
...someone who must face the fact that the dream they’ve lived for all their life is over…
and because of this crushing disappointment begins to search for a new dream…
a dream that would never end in such a crushing way…
a dream worthy of the devotion he gave to the other…
will meet a friend who seems to have found enough to fill a heart completely full…
and through him or her will find the One his soul had always truly longed for, tho’ he didn’t even know!
Only He knows when the saddest “loss” will prove to have been the most joyful “win”!
I was reading the other day, that in theological terms, while most know that the “Omnipotence of God” means that He is infinitely powerful over all things and happenings… and the “Omnipresence of God” means that He is infinitely present everywhere… the lesser known theological concept of the “Immanence of God” means that He is equally living in every moment of time...past, present and future!!
Just as He is with you in each moment that you are living and in the times today when you are suffering and struggling…
He is also equally living in the future moments, enjoying and rejoicing with “future you” the release...and even the benefits and fruits...of the struggles you’re living today!
It's very mind-stretching, but this means that He is weeping with you in the present troubles and laughing with you in the future over the victories that will come from these!
Weeping and rejoicing... over the same event... "at the same time"!
Which means, when you expand your bracket into eternity…
YOU WON!!