Daily Lesson for February 24, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 5 verses 43 through 48:

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

In 9th grade we were getting ready to play our cross-town rivals Hutchinson Junior High. They had upset us for the City title the year before and we were bloodthirsty for revenge.

After school we were practicing on the dirt field which ran east/West because the 7th graders had a flag football game on the main field. Jim McCulley went out for a pass running east and looked back to the west where Bobby Vaughan was tossing the ball. The sun was just beginning to hang off in the horizon a looking back Jim couldn't see a thing. Overwhelmed by the light, the pigskin hit Jim squarely, right in the center of his face mask.

Jim threw up his hands and shook his head. "The sun was in my eyes," he complained.

And with that Coach Phelps, who was the craziest coach we ever had -- which is saying a lot for Texas football -- went even crazier. Rumor was Coach Phelps had been in Vietnam and that he had lost something there. He would get so worked up in class -- history, because that's what we call history teachers in high school: "Coach" -- that he would step outside for a smoke break on the patio right during the middle of the day just to calm down. He needed a cigarette now. He was ballistic -- yelling and screaming and breaking into a the mock Japanese gibberish he was infamous for.  And then this question to Jim that none of us will ever forget. "Do you think the sun is not shining at Hutchinson Junior High?  Do you think they're practicing in the dark over there on 31st and Canton?"

And there it was -- our first theological lesson on God's general grace from the most unlikeliest of places and people: God sends his sun on the evil and on the good, on us and on the Rangers of Hutchinson Junior High School. A lesson we'll never forget.

Thanks Coach.