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TheDiscipleMD

I don’t care how often professional football players bow their head in prayer after scoring a touchdown or how many times they point to the sky recognizing deity in their lives, I doubt that God cares one bit about who wins and loses football games, or any game, at any level…but I do…because on occasion I am inspired by it! When Joe Flacco hit Jacoby Jones with a 70 yard touchdown pass in the closing seconds of a Baltimore Ravens playoff game against Denver in 2013, I couldn’t help but think that football games, like life, rarely produce miracles. But every once in a while you get treated to one. And that is why you never give up on your team. Because, well…miracles happen! I don’t know how many times fans have left the stadium when it seems hopeless for the home team, only to find out later that they missed out on an inspiring comeback and victory. And, often one man’s miracle is another’s misery. Just ask any Bronco’s fan!

I know that using the word ‘miracle’ to describe any athletic play is cheapening its true meaning, but found within all aspects of life are symbols and events that mirror it’s more lofty divine meaning. After all, a miracle is often associated with a rare occurrence or something out of the ordinary. And that last minute Flacco fling was certainly one of them! And, if you were one of those football fans who turned off your television set because there was no chance that Baltimore was going to win that game, you missed out on an exciting finish and the celebration that followed.

Athletics often do mirror real life and in our own private game of life we are in a battle on a daily basis against the adversity of this world. Often we find ourselves in the closing minutes of the day, month or year, or even our life, and all seems lost. And we need a miracle to save us! If we continue to exercise our hope in Christ we are promised that, in the end, ‘a miracle from on high’ will come! Despite how desperate things look to us, a play, a plan has been put in place that will save us. Christ said, “ I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). He was saying that even though it looks hopeless, it isn’t!  Because a miracle will happen in the end to turn things around and we will be victorious!

That ‘miracle from on mile high’ didn’t happen without effort. A play still needed to be run. Some blocking, then a  throw and a catch needed to happen to produce the miracle.  Jesus Christ has also laid out a plan (or play), that when implemented,  will always produce a victory for those who run it!  That is the miracle of it all!  The play always works when it is properly run!  ALWAYS! It is called the plan of redemption or salvation.

Space prevents me from expanding on this grand plan, but if we have desires to know,  I would echo the words of Moroni found in the last verse of the book of Ether.

“And now, I would commend you to seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written, that the grace of God the Father, and also the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, which beareth record of them, may be and abide in you forever.” (Ether 12:41)