Overtime

       I am from Indiana and one of the favorite sports for the high schools, was basketball. I liked basketball, but could not play it. I watched it being played and even tried out for the team, but alas, my coordination was such that I could not even do a lay-up shot with any success, so I became the manager of the team. That meant that I took care of the uniforms and meds for blisters and such. Basketball, in the old days, was measured in quarters as is football today. Four quarters made up a game. Now it is just two halves for basketball, but still four quarters for football. We like to measure things in quarters, halves or other measurements such as a “lifetime” or an epoch or era. My Father was diagnosed as stage 4 cancer and given 6 months to live. Other friends have stage 2 or 3 of this or that disease. Psalm 90:10 says,“

        The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” The average for life in the United States is 78 years of age. The world average runs between 71 and 72 years of age. The above verse states that we have 70 years and in some cases 80 years. Taking the analogy back to football, if we live 80 years, then each “quarter” is 20 years. My age is now 81 and as one pastor told me recently, “We are in overtime.” Realizing that God could have called me home any number to times in my lifetime, I have come to know by experience that it is all up to God anyway. When He calls you home, you do as the last words of the passage above, you fly away. You may have a melody running through your head about now that says, “Some glad morning when this live is o'er, I'll fly away.” That's it. When this live is over. Only God knows when that is going to be but in the meantime, He has given us a work to do. Mankind is somewhat adaptable in what they can do in any of the “quarters” of life. My first quarter, I ran the mile, the half mile and the mile relay in every track meet. My second quarter, I joined the U. S. Navy and played in almost every parade in a hundred mile radius of the School of Music. My second quarter, I found myself being youth director at a church, staying up all night, roller skating until midnight, eating pizza and then bowling until 6 A.M. In the morning. I wondered why I had a heart attack at age fifty two. In the fourth quarter, I went through my surgeries for various physical problems including CABG and cancer, numerous stents and a couple of strokes and am now left to preaching a couple of times a month and typing a lot in my period of “overtime.” You will find that God has a purpose for you in whatever stage in which you find yourself. Your main purpose is to know God and to glorify Him forever. We help people to know God by sharing our faith with them. You know, that's what has happened in your life and how God has worked in each quarter of your time here on earth. The second part of your purpose is to glorify God in everything that you do. If what you are doing cannot glorify God, then guess what? You shouldn't be doing it. In whatever quarter you are in, Praise God for what He is doing in your life today. As one radio announcer used to say, “Keep on, keeping on.”