This past week marked the beginning of "March Madness", when the NCAA basketball tournament begins. The madness was heightened this year when there was a $1 billion offer for anyone who could correctly fill out the entire tournament brackets. After the first day of the tournament, 98.3% of all brackets had been busted. By the third day of games, no one had an intact bracket. This just shows how tenuous a hold can be in basketball.
However, I harken back to the madness of my childhood and youth in watching a basketball tournament. It was not the NCAA tournament which caused the frenzy, but the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. This was back in the 70's, long before the super conferences of today and back when only one team would make the NCAA tournament from each conference. The ACC was the first conference to determine its representative via a tournament. This meant the winning team went to the NCAA tournament and the other teams either played in the National Invitational Tournament or stayed home. The NCAA tournament only had sixteen teams in it. This made for some incredible basketball with tickets almost impossible to purchase for the games. In school, we would beg out teachers to let us listen to the ACC tournament games on the radio (This was long before cable TV). Some teachers would realize they wouldn't have our attention and so would relent to let us listen. The teachers who tried to carry on business as usual had to deal with student sneaking radios into class with the ear plug. They also had to battle the constant distraction from students as we talked about what happened in the games that had taken place already. We all knew who was a Carolina fan, Duke fan, State fan, Clemson fan or a Virginia fan. Of course, I was and still am a Wake Forest fan, which meant my team never won the ACC tournament in this old school format. It truly was madness during the ACC tournament. Then there was always the lucky student whose parents would keep them out of school so they could listen to the games or even go to the tournament. The first two days of the tournament were on school days and the final two days were on the weekend, so we could watch the semi-finals and finals.
The greatest game I have ever seen played happened at the 1974 ACC tournament championship, which pitted the University of Maryland against NC State. There were some great players in that game like John Lucas, Tom McMillen, Len Elmore, Monte Towe, Tom Burleson and David Thompson. This game would propel these men to legendary status in ACC lore. Of the fourteen players who played in that game, eight would be drafted by the NBA. This was the clash of two great teams and only one would be allowed to compete in the NCAA tournament. State won the game by a score of 103-100 in overtime. State would go on to beat an incredible UCLA team in the NCAA semi-finals, in another classic game. But this Maryland-State game was just an incredible game from start to finish, a game you didn't want to miss. There was madness in the air. Amazingly, after 40 years, I can still remember that game, which shows the power of March Madness.
On Sunday, we looked at another madness. I Peter 3:13 tells us, "Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?". The word for eager could easily be translated as "zealous", kind of like madness. This passage reminds the follower of Christ that we should be zealous to do what is good and right in God's eyes. Certainly, we live in a pagan culture with morals which have become relative and slowly degrading. However, we are not to do what is right with the standard of our culture, but with the standard of the Bible. March Madness should pale in comparison to our passion in doing what is right. We do what is right whether that is honored in our culture or whether it sends us to jail. As our culture continues to compromise and become more evil, this will be a bigger challenge. Doing right in God's eyes will quickly fall out of favor and will become costly for us. It is already happening around us, so we must be zealous in doing good. This is our goal, not because our culture will affirm us or celebrate us. This is our goal because we have a different mindset and a different heart. We had heart surgery when we came to Christ and He has given us a passion to do the right thing.
Please, don't read this as some wayward desire to harken back to the "good ol' days". The good ol days weren't all that good and God has now given us an opportunity to let our light shine brightly. Never before in my lifetime has it been as exciting to be a follower of Jesus. Obeying Him and doing what He says is right, now makes us stand out from our culture. We become rebels and a prime target for persecution. I think it's great that we can now allow our friends and neighbors to see the difference Jesus makes. We don't have ben able to spout the proper theology, we simply have to honor God in what we do. Our friends and neighbors will be shocked by what they see. They will see people who care about those in need, marriages that not only stay together but thrive, children who are loved and disciplined, generosity, patience and an incredible peace. So how about making a decision to get more fired up about doing the right thing than by some basketball tournament which will end in a few weeks? Let's have right-living madness!
No comments:
Post a Comment