Trophies in the Attic

While cleaning out the attic recently, I came across a box filled with basketball trophies from my high school and college days. I was surprised to see how tarnished and broken they had become with the passing years. Once tall soldiers holding miniature basketballs aloft in outstretched arms, now most of the figures have been broken off at their bases. The shiny gold and silver gloss of the awards has dulled and an ugly patina with some rust spots has started to appear on most of them.

What a metaphor of life, I thought to myself. Here I was thirty-plus years later, carefully working at a task that demanded that I protect my fragile back and gimpy knees. I couldn’t help but find my mind wandering back to an earlier day when I had raced up and down the basketball court with reckless abandon, giving little thought or worry to bodily concerns. In those days, I literally threw myself into the fray, diving for loose basketballs and running into thinly-padded brick walls. Now, quite gingerly, I went about a much less demanding task, worrying if I would be able to get out of bed the next morning.

Even more, though, I found myself thinking of how quickly the years from youth to middle age have passed. It seems like only yesterday that I was a kid bouncing a basketball down the floor at the old Prichard gym, listening as Coach Dace and Mr. G called out instructions. Now I anxiously await each month’s arrival of AARP’s newsletter. I need that information!

What’s the point? Simply this. Life is short regardless of how many years God blesses us with in this world. This is why it is absolutely imperative that we seize each day and live it to the fullest for Him. Have you been thinking about doing some good deed? Ending some bad habit? Telling someone you love about Jesus? Do it today! (from PHILosophically Speaking, p. 226-228)