Transcend Circumstance

“What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player.”

John Wooden

John Wooden was a legend. There have been few like him. Yet the reason he affected so many lives was not because of basketball, but because he coached to transcend basketball into life. He saw the court as more than winning but as the practice place for life. Basketball became more than a game but an opportunity to teach not just the ways of the game but the ways of life. He knew what was most important and took every opportunity, even sports, especially sports, to share that with others. As a result he has touched thousands of lives. For it is not only the players he coached and interacted with but the lives that those then went on to do the same. His vision was influential and contagious. It was always bigger than basketball and so let us follow in the footsteps of a legend. Wherever you are, whatever you do let us transcend our arena, never letting it become the end, but only the beginning.

“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven…”
Matthew 6:19-20 NLT

Jesus spoke to a culture so different, yet so the same. We struggle the same temptation to put more of our time, energy and resources into things that don’t last than things that will. Fame, money, possessions, awards, records, and so on will not last. They will all fade. What will last is the Kingdom of God. Now, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t spend any time in things of this world. For how else will we further the kingdom if we are not in the midst of these things. However, instead that our primary concern should not stop there. In whatever we are doing it is not so much the thing that we are doing so much as the importance we place on that thing. So let us not see our fame, money and possessions as the end but as the beginning, the means to reach people for His Kingdom for that is treasure that will last forever. We all have treasures. What are you doing with yours?