Is it All Bad to Be a Moving Target?"

“You are the light of the world”  (Matthew 5:14-16)

When I sat down next to a young man at a medical clinic recently I struck up a conversation about the coat he was wearing.  It was a football letterman’s jacket from a local high school.  I asked him if he played this past season.  He told me he had graduated the year before.  So I asked him, “What position did you play on your team?”  When he replied that he played both linebacker and fullback, I then asked him which position he liked best.  His answer surprised me at first, though it was not hard for me to understand his preference after all.  His favorite position was linebacker because, as he said, “When you’re fullback you have eleven players singling you out and coming after you to tackle you.  But when you’re a linebacker you get to be one of the eleven who single out that one opposing player carrying the ball.”  I had to admit to him, “You know, I’ve never seen it quite that way before!”

The linebacker is a defensive position.  A fullback is in the back field (behind the line) and on the offense.  Along with just a handful of other players, the fullback is often in contact with the football.  There are satisfactions that accompany playing each of these positions.  And both are absolutely vital for winning games.  Yet as I noted in my very first blog, in order to win games it is most necessary to advance the ball and get it across the goal line.  That is where the greatest thrill lies.  Although it comes with a price, it is these players whose names are best known.

Now as Christians it is not the point that we make our own names known.  The entire New Testament urges to the contrary that the Christian role is one of service for the sake of others.  The Apostle Paul urges us to count others as more important than ourselves (Philippians 2:1-11).  Yet there is one person who is to be lifted up day in and day out, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Whatever our specific calling in life, we are placed in our world to bear witness for His name.  At times that does not make us popular.  And the calling is not always easy.  Living for Jesus can be accompanied by a cost, sometimes a heavy one.  Yet it is as we faithfully live out our roles that the kingdom of God is advanced through us.  And this is the high privilege He has assigned to every person who knows His redemption.