The Unfinished Field of Dreams

All the best movies about sports are about baseball.
For some mysterious reason football, basketball, soccer, hockey, golf or whatever sport you love can not consistently inspire great films. Sure they are some out there: Hoosiers, The Big Green, Tin Cup, The Mighty Ducks 1, 2 and 3.
Since football seems to be the main sport people in America care about, football probably comes in second: Rudy, The Little Giants, Remember the Titans, and Brian's Song are all excellent films.
But I ask you, do they compare to the consistent quality and inspirational power of movies like Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, For Love of the Game, Eight Men Out, The Natural, Major League, The Sandlot, A League of Their Own, The Rookie, Fever Pitch, Rookie of the Year, Angels in the Outfield, or Moneyball?
I'm sure you could pick out one or two of those that suck, but any cinephile will agree that baseball is the most inspirational sport when it comes to film. Why? I'm honestly not too sure; you'll have to ask Kevin Costner, but that's not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about catalysts. Change agents. Heavy moments. You see, all films, all good stories have them; baseball movies especially. These are those moments where you realize the way things have been need to change and they need to change right now. It's the voice that says "If you build it, he will come." Or it's a beautiful woman that won't have you unless you straighten up. Or it's hitting rock bottom and realizing the only job you can get is coaching girls baseball. I could go on and on, but in every good film, novel, or bedtime story there is a "but one day" moment. And it's my opinion that one of the major differences between real life, or my life at least, and that of the characters in stories is that most of my "if you build it he will come" moments have been ignored. If I was in that corn field, picking corn, going about my day and all of a sudden I heard Kevin Costner speak to me from heaven, I would turn my iPod up and pretend nothing happened. Maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit. Maybe I would listen. Maybe I would plow under my corn and start building. But using every moment of my life as evidence, there is no way I would have finished that field. There is no way I would have waited for whatever to happen. There is no way I would have finished it. In fact, I think that's probably true for most people. Stories about normal people doing normal things that most of us do aren't interesting. Stories about men and women doing extraordinary things that none of us have ever done or will ever do but all wish we could do; those are interesting. Even stories based on true stories are always altered or improved because the true, true story always disappoints.
Let's look at me.
I was a soccer player. I loved it more than any other thing on God's great planet. You put me on a field with a ball at my feet and a goal in my sight and a few other guys in my way, and I would do anything to get that ball in that goal and when I did, even now as I write about it I can taste the immense joy that filled my body once it slides past the goalie and bounces off the net. Or that beautiful rush I got when I relieved another player of the ball, made that perfect pass, slide the ball between someone's legs, fouled someone and got away with it, or just made a fool out of the guy trying to defend me. And there was nothing more frustrating than a red card, or a ref not seeing a foul, missing an off sides call, watching the ball slide between my own legs, missing a pass, or the mother of all mistakes: an own goal. For all it's frustration and pure joy combined I loved it. For me, there wasn't anything on earth like that game. And luckily for me, I was good at it. From five years old through college I played the game and I loved the game. It was my life. I could write and write about the many great moments of my soccer career: the wins, the losses, the hat-tricks, the injuries, the recoveries, and my many nemeses (Kyle Hopkins being the biggest), but I want to talk to you today about the last second in the last game on the last field I ever played on. Because that was the moment where I looked back and saw all of the catalytic moments of my life and realized that I had heard the voices, but never finished building the field.
It ended with a loss. It ended suddenly. It ended with me on my knees crying, crying as if someone had just stolen all I had worked for and burned it in front of me. It ended before I was ready.
Let me back up. I played college soccer at Southeastern University from 2000-2004. I started my first year and by my second, I was made captain. It was a stupid coaching decision to put me as captain, but it was done. That year was my best year. I made all conference and I was put on the all tournament team at the regional tournament. Junior year, we had a new coach and I wasn't captain anymore, but I was on track to outdo my previous season. Then I tore my meniscus and was out for the rest of the season. That summer I trained harder than I had ever trained my entire life. I had never wanted anything more than to go all the way to the national tournament that year. I wanted All-American. I wanted 20 goals. I wanted records broken. I wanted interest from pro teams.
I got none of that. 4 games in I had lost my starting spot and sat the bench most of that season. In the last game of my life on a breezy, chilly day at Clearwater College, with my parents and girlfriend watching, I played about 5 minutes. I contributed nothing to that game nor to most of that season. I received no awards, no honorable mentions and no interest from anyone. So when that whistle blew, I landed on my knees and cried. Even as I write about this, I can think of nothing else but the feel of the grass on my knees, the breeze on my neck, the cold on my cheeks as the frigid wind blew my tears away, and that gut-wrenching feeling that it was over. From age 5-21 my life was about soccer, and there on that field, on that day, when that whistle blew, for that brief moment, I had no idea what my life was supposed be about. I was kneeling on a metaphorical half-finished baseball field with Kevin Costner's voice sarcastically calling from the heavens, "Nice work, idiot."
Sad story right? Well, there's a reason for it. Even though soccer was all I wanted, I never treated it that way. When I said that summer before my senior year was the hardest I'd ever trained in my life, what I should have said was it was the only summer I actually trained. I never gave it my everything. I never pushed myself to be the best. I never dedicated my time, my body or my mind to the sport. There were many times when I heard Costner's voice in the field in the form of coaches saying, "He's got great potential, but he needs to improve _____." Or my mom pushing me to run in the off seasons. Or watching my friends, like Derek Britt or Thomas Whited, train and train and train and constantly get better. I had so many catalytic moments where things could have gone the other way where I had the opportunity to get better and give 100%, but I didn't do it. And I believe sitting on that bench that year was God showing me the rewards for such behavior.
After that lesson, I found a new God-given passion in teaching young people and it has consumed my life to this day. But really that passion is a passion to please God. I fail constantly in that area, but it's still all I want. And on that last day, I want to fall on my knees and for tears to stream down and for Him to lift me up and say (probably in Kevin Costner's voice) "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Come and share in my happiness."
So I ask you now,
What are you doing with your life? What are you passionate about?
Whatever it is, God has placed catalytic moments in your life to spur you on that path and push you to do more and be better. Don't ignore them. Take them. But ultimately know this. If your greatest passions are placed on things of this world, there will come a day, maybe tomorrow or 65 years from now, where it will be taken from you and there will be nothing you can do about it. I could have tried to steal that ref's whistle or maybe tackled him to the ground when I saw him reaching for it, but inevitably that game would have ended no matter what I did.
Within all of us, believer or non, there is a seed. For many that seed stays a seed for their whole lives. For others, something happens that brings us in to faith in God and that seed gets planted. And if we trust in His work and His plan for our lives, it will grow and grow and grow and bear fruit and ultimately break free of our bodies and dominate our whole lives and change the lives of many others. And when our lives are over, we leave the body behind and move into our true purpose in a land free of disappointment, failure or sadness.  Put your trust in He who planted the seed and be passionate and diligent about laying your self down for His sake and when it's all said and done no story or movie in the world will have been as inspiring or interesting as the life you led and are going to lead with Him as your catalyst.
Amen.