Fly Eagles Fly
Romans 5:3
"And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience."
The word for patience in the Greek is elpis (el-pece') which means to anticipate, usually with pleasure.
Lina and I have a Sunday tradition of watching the Eagles play. She has come to adopt the Eagles as her home team. I am from the Philly area, so I am pretty much a Philadelphia sports fan as a straight ticket. I define myself as a "No-Fault" fan of the Eagles. If they win, I am happy. If they lose, I experience a slight tinge of disappointment, but then move on.
I guess that does not make me a true fan. You'd think some Eagles fans as a "widow wearing black" based on how they mourn a loss of the Eagles, the Phils, or the Flyers. The Sixers are so bad now that their fans, if they have any left, really can't mourn anymore. They are just numb.
It is pretty pathetic how people grieve the loss of "their" sports team. Maybe it because they take undue glory in their teams victory...as in "We" won. I am sure the uppity-ups in professional sports want to nurture this personalization. It makes us more prone, even compelled, to buy outrageously priced tickets to the events, player jerseys with our own names on the back, etc.
My "great if they win, don't really care if they lose" perspective was not always my stance. Back when I was in college, the Eagles were as bad as the Sixers are now, Yet, I would eagerly get ready to watch the Eagles. I would hope against hope that somehow that this week could be different. Like Charlie Brown running to kick Lucy's football, I would be soon saying "AAAAAHHH" as the prospects of winning the game ended quickly, sometime in the first couple of series. I didn't take long for the hard ground of defeat to come.
However, the next week, I would "Charlie Brown" the whole disastrous routine again.
College was a time where God began to teach me some vital lessons about how to deal with life and reality. A big part of this was to prioritize what really was important and what was not. I was spending a lot of time in misappropriated mourning and needed to better focus on what was important and do something about it. Get in the game rather than cry in the stands.
I came to see this whole "Dysfunctional Eagles Defeat" syndrome (known clinically as DEAD) as a pretty sorry exercise in futility. Since my grades needed some bucking-up, I started skipping watching the Eagles games on Sundays. Instead, I went to study in the library. When I returned to the Dorm to hear that the Eagles had been crushed, I wasn't surprised and was glad that I had not wasted another Sunday afternoon watching the farce, and then having a generic feeling of nausea for the rest of Sunday. Not a great way to prepare for the start of the week. My grades also went up.
Yes, the Eagles flew yesterday, into the ground, like an malfunctioning plane. Worse yet, they crashed and burned squarely on the star of the Dallas Cowboys. I think the defeat might be a good omen as it could purge lethargy and complacency out of the Eagles corpus. It seems that the replacement center, like a misfiring spark plug, created an out-of-sync combustion of the team's cylinders during yesterday's game. Maybe the "tribulation" will make him teachable in practice and more ready for next week's game. In Dallas, against the Cowboys, again.
Go Eagles!
"And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience."
The word for patience in the Greek is elpis (el-pece') which means to anticipate, usually with pleasure.
Lina and I have a Sunday tradition of watching the Eagles play. She has come to adopt the Eagles as her home team. I am from the Philly area, so I am pretty much a Philadelphia sports fan as a straight ticket. I define myself as a "No-Fault" fan of the Eagles. If they win, I am happy. If they lose, I experience a slight tinge of disappointment, but then move on.
I guess that does not make me a true fan. You'd think some Eagles fans as a "widow wearing black" based on how they mourn a loss of the Eagles, the Phils, or the Flyers. The Sixers are so bad now that their fans, if they have any left, really can't mourn anymore. They are just numb.
It is pretty pathetic how people grieve the loss of "their" sports team. Maybe it because they take undue glory in their teams victory...as in "We" won. I am sure the uppity-ups in professional sports want to nurture this personalization. It makes us more prone, even compelled, to buy outrageously priced tickets to the events, player jerseys with our own names on the back, etc.
My "great if they win, don't really care if they lose" perspective was not always my stance. Back when I was in college, the Eagles were as bad as the Sixers are now, Yet, I would eagerly get ready to watch the Eagles. I would hope against hope that somehow that this week could be different. Like Charlie Brown running to kick Lucy's football, I would be soon saying "AAAAAHHH" as the prospects of winning the game ended quickly, sometime in the first couple of series. I didn't take long for the hard ground of defeat to come.
However, the next week, I would "Charlie Brown" the whole disastrous routine again.
College was a time where God began to teach me some vital lessons about how to deal with life and reality. A big part of this was to prioritize what really was important and what was not. I was spending a lot of time in misappropriated mourning and needed to better focus on what was important and do something about it. Get in the game rather than cry in the stands.
I came to see this whole "Dysfunctional Eagles Defeat" syndrome (known clinically as DEAD) as a pretty sorry exercise in futility. Since my grades needed some bucking-up, I started skipping watching the Eagles games on Sundays. Instead, I went to study in the library. When I returned to the Dorm to hear that the Eagles had been crushed, I wasn't surprised and was glad that I had not wasted another Sunday afternoon watching the farce, and then having a generic feeling of nausea for the rest of Sunday. Not a great way to prepare for the start of the week. My grades also went up.
Yes, the Eagles flew yesterday, into the ground, like an malfunctioning plane. Worse yet, they crashed and burned squarely on the star of the Dallas Cowboys. I think the defeat might be a good omen as it could purge lethargy and complacency out of the Eagles corpus. It seems that the replacement center, like a misfiring spark plug, created an out-of-sync combustion of the team's cylinders during yesterday's game. Maybe the "tribulation" will make him teachable in practice and more ready for next week's game. In Dallas, against the Cowboys, again.
Go Eagles!
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