You can get me to admit that much of my life revolves around sports. Some guys love hunting or fixing cars but my life always had a sports theme. You read here before that my first real memory of baseball was back in 1968 during the World Series. Games were mostly played during the day back then. Another great memory is the college football game back in 1969 between the Universities of Texas and Arkansas. My paternal grandfather was living in Arkansas back then so it could be my thought was if Texas won then it was something big. The game really was a big game since even President Nixon showed up. Most of my free time during the day was spent throwing a ball of some sort around at home. There was always time to try out what little skill I possess at home.

Playing sports was also fun. My first team sport was baseball after my first grade year. There was much room for improvement at that age. During my school years the pattern was to play football, then basketball and then baseball. Thirty years later it still is a topic of conversation at reunions. My skills were never enough to amount to anything but it was still great fun for me. Great friendships develop while playing a team game. Some of the best times of my growing up years happened on one field or the other. You learn a great deal about yourself and others when working hard together for a common goal.

You learn to live or interact with all types of people. When the ball is in play there is no thought about the color of your teammate. You are just one team trying to win. This is where sports reminds us of the best and worst in our history. Sports Illustrated has a great article this week on the color barrier being broken in professional football. It is not however an uplifting piece on how we all learn to live together. History is usually more than the myths surrounding a story. The irony lies in us celebrating integration of a game which requires the admission of a racist past. It is a given that this fact works two ways. No one is immune to stupidity simply because of their ethnic heritage. This article really bothered me. Humanity likes to point out its moral nature yet it has to acknowledge an immoral reality. We isolate people with labels or other terms due to ethnicity, gender or other differences. We tend to practice selective enlightenment.

Lately the thought keeps rolling through my brain on how far too many of us are selective in our life. We observe our peculiar standards of religion with no recognition of other sinful areas. We prefer our style of church without noticing if it really is inclusive. We say we want our church to grow but only with our kind of people. We want to pray for a select few but neglect wanting God's best for even our enemies. Paul wrote that we are to offer our bodies a living sacrifice to God. That means giving Him everything which leaves no room for selecting what we give and what we keep. God wants more than what we choose to allow Him to have. He even deserves what we have not selected to yield. The first step is not stop being selective in how we view our life including our sin. Doesn't our hymn say, "Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow?" Or are we already selecting what part of the song we sing and what part we avoid?

Bro. Trey