The Beautiful Game

I'm talking about football (SOCCER) of course. If you've been totally blur, FIFA World Cup 2006 Germany will be held in June this year, Arsenal & Barcelona are in the UEFA Champions' League Final and I support Manchester United, which happens to be the world's most well supported club. But there's one or two things we could learn from football, which I was pondering upon this few days as the Barcelona-Milan match was on yesterday morning (OK, ya, I slept at 5 a.m. yesterday, but you could only envy a person who's on vacation).

First of all, football (as also in life) does not escape God's will. I don't know how this would make sense at all but God's will seems to be such that, though you're the better side, you sometimes lose. Look at Villareal v Arsenal. Look at how many chances the 'yellow subs' (Villareal) had. The penalty. The free kicks. The chances... It is within God's will that some players suffer defeat though they play the best; while others win though they're not as good as the earlier bunch of 'lads'. Kinda like life, ain't it, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose- no matter how 'good' or how 'on-guard' you are. God's will is above all. The good news is God's will always is acted in the "Love-Holy" symphony, and we'll all rejoice where we're heading to regardless of our circumstances now.

Secondly, no matter what position we are in (Goalkeeper, defender, striker etc.) we all play crucial roles in the 'Team of Christ'. If you watch more football than just World Cup, Scoring is just one thing about football, there's also the other thing called keeping the opponent from scoring, feeding the striker, and so on so forth. But well, you guess it, that is true also for the Christ's body (for example, what Paul wrote). May I go as far as saying that the coaches, manager, and kit manager (as in the person who organises the jerseys) also play important roles...

Anyways, back to the Barca-Milan match, some pretty impressive display of football were played by both sides and the commentator was excellent (he even criticized the commentator in front of him for being too judgmental). The best teams in Europe (rpobably the world too). The best commentator ever, in my opinion. In Christ, let us also strive to be the best, and in Christ, one thing is for sure, we're always Barcelona (for that match, I mean) --- we're in The Winning Team.

To the best of us, Joga Bonito (Play beautiful) :)

AMEN.