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You might know this about me. I’m kinda a sports guy. I love following the teams that I cheer for, and I love following the engaging storylines around all of sports. But there’s one thing I love more than anything about sports. I love seeing beyond the court and the field and into the mind of the athletes.
That’s why when “The Last Dance” started streaming, I gobbled it up. Michael Jordan was the most iconic sporting person in history worldwide. He won title after title, and racked up record after record. But what this documentary revealed about him is something that surprised me-he had a drive for more- and it could never be satisfied.
We’ve all got this tug, this incessant need to be searching for more. It’s something that we inherited from Adam and Eve. Paul talks about where that started: “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds doing evil deeds.”
That’s where we started, but that’s not where we are. That’s where we began, but it’s not where we’ve landed. Verb tenses matter. A lot. I was married is a whole different animal than I am married. I am 20 is a whole different ballgame than I was 20. You were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds, but aren’t anymore. The gospel has come to us. So that’s not our current condition. It’s our past one. It’s how we used to think. It’s not how we think now. We’re different. We’re new. We are reconciled.
Do you see what that now means? It means that the one thing that has the height, the depth, the power, and the magnitude to satisfy the human heart is now reconciled to do that. It means that the vicious cycle that Eve was the first to perpetuate has now effectively ended. It means that the hunt for something big enough, solid enough, and important enough to set our souls on is ours to have and to enjoy and to experience now and in eternity in Jesus Christ.
Colossians 1:15-23
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peacethrough his blood, shed on the cross.
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your mindsbecause of[a] your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
