PrintPlease Don't Tell Me The Score!
We took our two youngest granddaughters to a football game last weekend. It was one of those games that was won in the last minute or two. Either team could have been victorious. It was exciting, exhausting, exhilarating (and expensive!! Thankfully we had free tickets).
On our way home, I called a friend who was watching the same game via delayed telecast. He was on something like a 50-60 minute delay. He asked me where I was and I explained that we were on our way home from the very game he was watching. His immediate reaction before I could say another word was, "Don't tell me the score!!" I assured him I wouldn't spoil his viewing by telling him or even hinting at the end result.
That simple interchange prompted a line of thinking that saw me smiling to myself as I applied it to one of life's greatest questions: "How will it all end?" It seems that there are countless thousands of people who consult the stars or visit their favourite astrologer to get some idea about their future. Maybe there are even more people who stay away from such predictions and predictors because they don't want to know their life's final score.
As we drove home last weekend I really wanted to say to my friend, "It's OK George, our team wins". I don't know about you but sometimes I look out upon our world and it seems to me that the bad guys are getting all the breaks. The ball just seems to bounce and sit for them and goals are easy to score. At the same time, our team (the good guys, of course) trip and fumble their way around the ground and any goals they do score come at the cost of injuries and just plain hard effort.
When I spoke with George I knew what he was yet to see in that delayed telecast. Some of it was not pretty. I knew that our team would get behind on the scoreboard. No doubt George would feel that the game was lost when the other team (the bad guys) got those two quick goals. But I also knew how the game ended. And that's what counts in the long run.
To change the imagery, it's like reading a "who-done-it" when it's not until the last chapter or page that the mystery is uncovered, the bad guy is revealed and caught and good finally and forever prevails. Despite what seems to be at the moment in our crazy, upside-down world, I've read the book and I know how it ends. I know the final score. Our team wins!!
