Divine Insights from the Soccer Field: Choosing God's Wisdom

Hey everyone, I know it has been almost a month since I last posted. It has been a crazy time around here. However, I am back…

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Upward Soccer started at our church yesterday, and I am coaching one of our Division 3 teams (ages 8-10), and to be honest, I wasn’t sure how yesterday’s game was going to go.

I don’t know anything about soccer other than kick the ball in the net and don’t let them score on us.

What I do know is how to encourage kids (although it is hard sometimes, especially with some of my players this season). I know how to get them in the right spot, but at some point, they have to execute. I cannot play the game for them.

So in the final few minutes of our game yesterday, my team was up 2-0, and the other team was bee-lining toward my goalie. And I was NERVOUS!

One of my better defensive players had overplayed the ball around midfield and now it was just the opposition and my goalie. And I was not confident about her ability to stop an essentially wide-open shot (her parents said the same thing afterward).

The shot went up and my goalie snagged it out of the air!

I burst from my crouch on the sidelines, hands in the air, screaming “Way to go!”

It was an incredible moment. You see the little girl has not played much soccer although it does appear she has adults in her life who have. And when she was born they thought she was going to be blind!

But instead here is a little girl playing soccer, goalie in fact, stopping a shot attempt when it is up to her and her alone.

To say I was surprised doesn’t even begin to describe it.

This experience got me thinking about how things happen around us that don’t make sense and how God does things we cannot comprehend.

1 Corinthians 2:9-10 says, “However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him—these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.”

Paul reminds the church in Corinth that the wisdom of God is way different than the “wisdom” of humanity. He even describes how he and his team did not teach with “lofty speech or wisdom”.

Paul, instead, speaks to the wisdom that is not of this world. Wisdom that is everlasting and not doomed to pass away.

Worldly wisdom would have led me to not put that little girl in the goal, but I can also say that I was not tapped into Godly wisdom either.

I put the specific kids as defenders in front of her so she would be protected.

What that little girl reminded me of yesterday is that God is capable of way more than we could ever ask or imagine.

He has something prepared for us. He is up to something big!

Will you let Him in? Will you recognize Him revealing Himself to you? Will you trust in His divine wisdom over human wisdom (even when it makes no sense)?

Pretty sure that is just about EVERY story in the Bible…Funny how what happened then is exactly what still happens today.

This little girl reminded me, and convicted me, to side with Godly wisdom over my own. What about you?

Anyway, I was just thinking…