It’s Sunday afternoon [long sigh…] When you work for a church, Sundays are rarely a day of rest. This goes double when the church you work with is in the portable phase and every week teams of people work to transform a school gym to a worship center and back again. So, at the moment Bethany is off doing something, Eli is taking a nap, and I…ah yes…I am deep in the living room couch, watching game 7 of the Celtics/Cav’s series. I polished off some nachos, and am experiencing my own Sabbath moment.
Two quarters of play are now complete, Boston is ahead at the half, and I am reflecting on the play of Eddie House. The Celtics are at home working to closeout Cleveland to secure their spot in the Eastern Conference Finals. Paul Pierce wrapped up an two extrordinary quarters of play, and leads his team in scoring, but the hustle and passion of Eddie House motivated this post (sorry Pierce).
House may not be the primer player on the Celtics roster, but he entered the game and played with gusto, and with fire… like a man who had finally arrived in the NBA playoffs and loving it. He may not be the most skilled player on his team, but House is a great player. I know this because he’s getting big minutes in the playoffs on a team that has a chance to advance to the finals in the premier basketball league in the world. So wherever House stacks up within the ranks of the NBA aside, He a certainly has skills.
Okay, so I may not want to be Eddie House, but I’d desire to be like him in at least one way. I happen to believe that a player like House has some skills that help to make him an NBA caliber player. There are probably some innate abilities that he has that have helped his chances at playing hoops professionally. With that said, I believe it’s the countless hours of practice and dedication that none of us couch-sitting spectators pay attention to.
I’d like to be like Eddie House in that I want to get to a place where ability, practice, and dedication converge. I believe that God gives us abilities that relate to the plans he has for us. I also believe that those natural abilities require much refinement before we reach any level of greatness. Lately one question has reverberated in my mind in peaceful times like these: what am I doing when I feel most alive? I have realized that it is when I am working within a God-given purpose and ability that I feel the most alive. And the follow up question is if I were willing to work tirelessly to transform that ability into greatness what would happen?
I want to play this life with passion, with dedication, with sacrifice and with the kind of fire that House and the Celtics played in the first half of their win or the season is over game 7 match up. To do this– to live our lives with that kind of passion over a lifetime– requires that we discover the deep purpose and work that God has planned for us.
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