God’s Game of the Year (12/08/2002)

Jesus said:
Father, there are things You hide
from the wise and the well-read,
and reveal them only in little children heads.
(Paraphrase Mt. 11:25)

Boxscore of game : http://bit.ly/2wG1Te

Prayer requests were asked before
the Sunday School would bolt out the door.
The usual fare was requested of the Lord,
Lost pets to be found and
Healing for sick grandmas in the hospital ward.
Just before we started to pray,
A boy asked for a Houston Texan win today.

I stopped and said:
“No matter how many players point overhead,
I kind of doubt
That God cares who wins out.
So let’s pray for good coaching,
our defensive line won’t repeatedly be encroaching,
and may no one will leave the game
with a surgery approaching.”

So we said our prayers
humble and meek
and I sent them out for another week.
The kid hangs back and tells me
he said a prayer in his heart for a Texan victory.
Dang, if he read the Chronicle he would have seen,
Houston was an underdog of fourteen.

And up in heaven, God’s assistant was reading
all the Sabbath’s special pleadings.
She said: “Lord, I know you do not interfere
in the games on which man plays with the oblong sphere.
But there’s a game where there is just a single prayer
from a child who wants Your will to bear.”

“Angel, do Me a favor and
look down into future and see
and tell what would be required of Me?”

So off to Pittsburgh she went full bore
and back she came with part of the box score.
She stared at the stats as hard as she could
and said “Lord, this is not very good.
Forty-seven total yards is what this team will realize,
After all, they are simply a first year franchise.”

And God said, “Just this once,
For this child I will intervene,
But I really don’t want the world to turn Me into
a NFL prediction machine”

So as Catholics celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception,
The Texans scored off two Tommy Maddox interceptions
They returned a fumble for another score
The final: Steelers six ; Texans Twenty-four

Sometimes I’ll pull the boxscore from my wallet and wonder
what I told that child -was it a blunder?
It was a request to God whose intentions were pure,
unlike my desperate pleas for my football pool
which is so way immature.