Hope For The HopelessSample

Who is on Your Squad?

Let me tell you something. In the first game of the season for my eighth-grade basketball team, I scored… for the other team. 

That’s right. I put the ball in the wrong basket.

So much for my moment of glory.

By the end of the season it didn’t matter. My team won the Rogue Valley championship anyway. In the finals we had a showdown against our crosstown rivals and shut them down decisively. It wasn’t even close. We cooked ’em. The officials placed the gold medals around our necks and we posed for the obligatory photos, filled with the pride of achievement.

But let me tell you, I didn’t have much to do with our success. Sometimes, like the debacle of my first game, I think I actually made it harder for us to win. The reason we made it to the finals and became champs was mainly because we had this kid on our team named Kyle Singler.

Kyle was a talent to behold.

He went on to get a full-ride scholarship to Duke University, where he won a championship under Coach K. He was named the Final Four “player of the game.” He was drafted by the Detroit Pistons and was elected to the second team All-NBA rookie squad. Today, he’s raking in nearly five million dollars every year playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder as a professional NBA basketball player.

He was on my team.

A couple of years ago I ran into my old basketball coach and said, “Wasn’t it great when we had Kyle on our team?”

“Oh yeah,” he replied. “Our whole game strategy was just give the ball to Kyle.”

But let me tell you something else. Sometimes winning is all about who is on your Squad.

Though I sometimes still score for the wrong team, the Captain of Salvation is on my team. I am often awful, but my God is never anything other than awesome. He is the star player who assures how the final score is going to look.

When the final buzzer goes off there is no question that we will have won.

Even if, at this very moment, we are trailing, we don’t have to worry. We will pull this off.

That, my friends, is the basis of hope.

No matter how much I mess things up, no matter how bad the situation might be, no matter how much it feels like I am trapped in a corner and things don’t look good—my hope is in a God who says that the battle belongs to Him. He has never lost yet. 

The game is rigged. In our favor.