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I have a friend whose wife just can’t
understand why so many people are so interested in sports. She says that
she doesn’t understand why her husband should feel like he should
actually watch the games. After all, she says, all that matters is the
score. Why waste time seeing how the score comes about?
While I can't
exactly agree with her point of view, and I know that other things
really do matter, it is true that the winner is judged by the score.
Chuck Noll, who coached the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL, once
commented on why he likes football. “The nice thing about football,” he
said, “is that you have a scoreboard to show how you’ve done. In other
things in life, you don't. At least not one that you can see.”
Since life’s scoreboard is one that you
can’t see, man has been diligent in trying to make up his own substitute
scoreboard. He may think that the quantity of riches amassed is a good
scoreboard, or how new his car is, or something like that. But the
number of things we have is not necessarily the indicator of life’s
score. Neither is how high we rise in our company, or who we know and
associate with.
Sometimes in a football game, one team gets
more first downs, and gains more yards, and maybe even has a better
band, but those things are not what counts in the end. All that really
matters in the end is the score. In the game of life, a man may have
those earthly things we count so precious, and he may be a good
neighbor, and may even be kind to animals, but these are not really what
count in the end.
John saw a great vision of the scoreboard
of life. “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from
whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no
place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God;
and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the
book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were
written in the books, according to their works. ... And whosoever was
not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire”
(Revelation 20:11-12, 15). How do you stand according to what is written
in the books?
What's the Score?
by Bob Prichard
www.oxfordchurchofchrist.com |
