I like seeing the Butler Bulldogs play basketball. They are so unselfish. They will, as the saying goes, "turn down a good shot so that one of their teammates will get a great shot." I've gone to a few of their games, and seen them play on TV. They love to pass this ball around the perimeter, starting on one side and, if that area is not a good place to shoot from, they REVERSE the ball and pass it around to the other side.
Such reversal is an important concept in life, as well as in sports.
Sometimes we need such reversal in our lives, even in our spiritual lives. To our worldly eyes, we sometimes meet a "reversal of fortune" -- a string of "bad luck" or "bad breaks," which we usually regret. Yet if we are patient and are able to remember...we may find that, weeks and months and even years later, God was speaking through such "reversals" in order to get us in the right place, at the right time.
Let me use a little "Butler metaphor" to prove my point.
One day I went to see an important game on the Butler home schedule. In late February of 2008, Butler was ranked high in the national polls and, being a "mid-major," was involved in the special "bracket-buster" weekend that was occurring all across the nation. This was an innovative idea in which all of the top "mid-majors" in all of the small-school conferences played each other during this one special weekend every year. Drake, a small college in Iowa that was, at the time, leading the race in the Missouri Valley conference, was, according to this plan, invited to Butler to play the Bulldogs in Hinkle Fieldhouse.
The 16th-ranked Drake team was not expected to beat the 8th-ranked Butler 'Dawgs on their home court. But, right in front of my eyes, they did. It was a tough loss for Butler. It meant they were not going to be ranked as high in the NCAA tourney coming up. Meanwhile, Drake moved up and got a higher seed in the NCAA tournament. One might say that it's losses like that that can do permanent damage to a basketball program -- unless you forget about the principle of "reversal."
You see, when Drake played in the NCAA first round, a month later, they had to play a Western Kentucky team that upset them, beating Drake and sending them home early. That Western Kentucky team was so impressive, their coach was hired right after the tourney by big University of South Carolina. One of WKU's new recruits was quite upset that the coach had left. His name? Ronald Norad.
Sure enough, Ronald let go of his commitment to Western KY, and Butler came a-calling, convincing him to come instead to Butler. Now Norad is a key component of their march to this weekend's Final Four. Such is the reality of "reversal." If Drake hadn't beaten Butler, maybe Drake doesn't play Western Ky. and maybe Western Ky. loses to someone else in the first round and Norad doesn't ever play for Butler, keeping Butler out of the Final Four.
What does this have to do with our relationship with God? Well, as the saying goes, "When God shuts a door, He often opens a window." One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is patience -- which includes having the patience to perceive a potential "loss" as a possible "victory." There have been many times in my life that a "loss" that I suffered let to an even greater "gain," spiritually, in my life. "For where I am weak, there I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12:10) Strong with God's Spirit -- for HE determines my ways, not the plans I make, which sometimes work, and sometimes don't. We should always look for "God's great reversal."
David Hewitt
