Doves On Distant Oaks

Put Me In, Coach

I have always been a Philadelphia Eagles football fan. That's to be expected, growing up near the Philadelphia area. Even though I've moved around over the years and now live in the Deep South, I still bleed Eagles green. Although they won the Super Bowl in 2017, perhaps the more exciting time for me was the team they fielded in the late 1970's, leading to their first Super Bowl appearance in 1980.

It all began when the team hired Dick Vermeil to be their new coach in 1976. After a decade of fielding loosing teams, he decided to clean house. Having just arrived from coaching at UCLA, he knew most of the good college players, so he began drafting wisely. The ream only went 4-10 that first year, but that all changed the following year when Vermeil acquired a young quarterback out of Youngstown State that had spent most of his 3-year career sitting on the Los Angeles Rams bench. His name was Ron Jaworski.

Vermeil selected Jaworski for one hugely persuasive reason: he was coachable. He had a good work attitude and the grit that Vermeil wanted his whole team to have. He would later say:

I knew we needed a quarterback, but I didn't want a fat head. I wanted a guy with the right attitude. Ron had that. I was tough on him, but he accepted it and got better every year. (Ron Jaworski's Victorious Debut Against the Bucks, Ray Didinger, philadelphiaeales.com, 12 SEP 2018).

That seems to be an unusual attribute these days in modern sports where most seem to have an overly inflated opinion of themselves. Scratch that, it doesn't seem to exist only in the sports universe, but is pervasive throughout society as well. It even exists in the world of Christian believers.

What some Christians fail to understand is that they will never arrive, they are only arriving. This is called by a fancy word: sanctification. It's a word that's thrown around a lot, but is truly simple to understand. The word itself means "set apart," but it's not only a condition but a process. How can it be both? We need only look at pregnancy to understand.

Obviously, pregnancy is a condition, but when a woman is with child, the baby is changing through a process called gestation. I don't like to use the term growing, because the baby's growth is quite small compared to how much he or she will physically grow outside the womb. What the baby is doing is becoming fully formed, so that when it's born, it has every part necessary to live a full earthly life.

A baby's time in the womb can be directly related to our spiritual sanctification. It's the spiritual process of becoming more Christ-like, so that we can have full life in heaven. When we first accept Christ as our savior, we have simply begun the process. There is more construction to be done.

We should think of ourselves as being coachable, just like Vermeil saw Ron Jaworski had been. No fat heads needed for this process—no overly inflated egos of having arrived at righteousness need apply. In fact, we should probably consider ourselves to be always in a state of "becoming" right up until the time we pass away. That leaves us little room to build ourselves up about our faith, or to look down on others.

We are not perfect and should never expect to be. "Jaws" certainly wasn't. His team lost that Super Bowl in 1980 and he has never been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. However, it was his attitude that allowed him to survive for 17 seasons in the National Football League, become an ESPN Monday Night Football analyst, partly own the Philadelphia Soul of the Arena Football League, and receive numerous awards. He is now CEO of a company that manages golf courses throughout three states. He is still learning.

As we all should be. Certainly there are things we can do to make a difference in this world. We can do what we can well enough to be acknowledged, even if it is not at the highest level. We can, and should, help those who are struggling, even as we struggle ourselves.

Spiritually, we need to understand that we will never reach perfection. Yet, that is what we seek. We should consider ourselves to be always learning, always striving, always reaching toward righteousness. Then, only when the race is over, will we receive the "crown of righteousness" that the apostle Paul so eloquently talks about.

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.

– 2 Timothy 4:6-8

Keywords: Righteousness, Sanctification

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