Part 3: Keeping Score - Meditation Thoughts

Ready, Set... Life!

Keeping Score

I coach kid’s soccer in the summertime. I love almost every moment of it, too. One summer we had two games out of 16 that didn’t rain and I did not love that so much. But I have been coaching my oldest son’s team which is a group of 8 -10 year olds. I determined some time ago that I couldn’t coach kids younger than 8 because it would drive me crazy. It’s more like cat herding than coaching at that age. I’ve also determined that I probably can’t coach much older than 10 either. Oh, they play really well and even get most of the concepts. It’s the wheezing and coughing from the middle aged, portly coach that makes the kids so darned uncomfortable that’s the trouble.

In the league where I coach, and he plays, we have some rules. The man who runs the program is a friend of mine and he’s been at this for a really long time. He decided when he started the program that it would be a skills based educational soccer league. And while we play real games with referees, boundary markers, actual goal boxes, and even ‘off-sides’, we don’t keep score. In other words, it isn’t a ‘competitive’ league.

Right…

Try telling that to twenty 8 -10 year olds. Not a game goes by that one of my players doesn’t turn to me and say, “Coach, what’s the score?” And I reply in the same fashion every time. “We don’t keep score.”

Right…

Without variation my reply will be followed by a chorus of voices that blurts out the current score. Occasionally they will be incorrect and I will consult the surreptitious hash marks I keep in my roster notebook and, very quietly, correct them. Forget about telling twenty 8 – 10 year olds that ‘we don’t keep score’. This 40 year old coach can’t seem to stop marking down each goal either. It’s like we have something wired into the core of our being that says, “Make sure you know whether you’re winning or sucking wind. Second place is just the first loser to cross the finish line.” Sorry to mix sports metaphors but you know what I mean.

I think God keeps score really by just one thing. You know, in the game of life? There has to be some way for a holy God to determine if you and I are worth the effort it requires for Him to love us, right? I mean, ‘love’ is a ‘verb’ and all that. And let’s face it, ‘verbs’ generally require action. And action usually involves time and energy.

So what’s the one thing? (I suddenly feel like Jack Palance in “City Slickers”)

Love.

Seems simple on the page, but in the practice of the game of life it gets more complicated. But, check this scripture out, and then I’ll let you figure out how it applies to your life.

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. I John 4:19-21 (NIV)