The One Eternal

I had my future all figured out by the time I was seven years old. I remember with unusual clarity the day in second grade where everyone in the class stood up and said what they were going to be when we grew up.

What was I going to be? That was easy: First I was going to play in the NFL, after a few years I would transfer to the NBA before completing my legend in Major League Baseball. Later, I found out that my teacher relayed this response to my mom, who seemed amused. I couldn’t understand why.

Fifteen years later, and my mother’s reaction makes a little more sense.

But suffice it to say that from the earliest age I identified myself as an athlete. And so I enthusiastically took up as many sports as my parents would let me. Swimming, golf, baseball, basketball, cross country, track—I did them all. But my real love would have to wait a little while.

My mom was convinced I would break my neck if I ever played football. Lucky for me, my dad, who was a pretty good player in his day, wasn’t about to let his only son go through life without experiencing life on the gridiron. In the spirit of compromise, my mom agreed to let me play…when I reached the eighth grade.

And so football was the last of the various sporting ventures I took up. But it would outlast all the others.

I’ve seen the end of many careers. With the end of high school came the end of basketball and track. I always still had football, though, being fortunate enough to continue my career at the University of Dayton, a division 1-AA (now known as FCS) non-scholarship program.

Last December, something happened that happens every year: The football season ended. However, this time I was a college senior. And since the NFL isn’t in the market for undersized safeties from small schools with average speed, my football career ended too.

All of the sudden, I was no longer an athlete.

But something else happened between that day in the second grade and the day my athletic career ended: I stopped identifying myself as an athlete. I can never remember a time in my life where I didn’t have some sort of relationship with the Lord. As I matured, that relationship matured and deepened as well. One thing my athletic career helped teach me was that all things on earth eventually come to an end. One thing my relationship with Christ has taught me is to wrap your identity in anything other than Him is to set yourself up to be let down.

For it is God and God alone who is eternal, the permanent and steadfast foundation on which everything else springs forth and eventually returns. So by all means cherish and enjoy the time given to you in this life, but hold on to nothing more than the One who gives you that life. If you try to hold on to anything else, you will always find yourself empty handed.

Editorial