Jam 2 Jesus

Now everybody knows Kobe Bryant is my favorite basketball player. I don’t understand why he isn’t everyone’s favorite basketball player… He’s the best player in the world and the best to ever play basketball… yes, I’m saying he’s better than Michael Jordan…

 Don’t be fooled by the headline, I wasn’t writing this to make all you Jordan fans happy… Kobe’s still the man when it comes to basketball…

But in some ways, MJ fans are right… MJ is better than Kobe, Mighty Jesus, that is…

Society has taught us to look up to other humans who seem to be doing what it is we think we want to do. If your dream is to be a basketball star, normally you’ll find a star athlete to imitate. Me, being a lover of basketball, well maybe I’m more than a lover… I’m practically obsessed with the sport and convinced God created basketball for me…. well yea, me being that crazy lover of basketball, naturally I look at players and admire them.

Kobe was the player of my choice. I have his shoes, I have a Kobe Bryant shirt. I want to shoot like him, I want to run like him… to sum it all up, there are times when I wish my game was just like his.

And that’s normal… we should want to be like the best… but we should also want to be like THE BEST. You can call him Jesus, God, Christ, Lord, Savior… call him what you want, but for today, he’ll be MJ: Mighty Jesus…

And MJ is the best… the same way we want to play the game like Kobe, we should too want to play the game of life like Jesus. He should be the All-Star of our hearts… in conversation I could go on for hours proving why Kobe should be MVP, how many debates do we get into proving why Jesus is our MVP?

We’ll buy $125 shoes, $100 game tickets, jersey, and highlight tapes of Kobe and other star athletes…

But who pay tithes these days? Who has gospel CDS and DVDS in their homes?

Kobe stats or anyone else’s that you admire could never outdue MJ’s stats… Kobe’s human, he makes mistakes, he misses shots…

Sometimes I think to myself, if someone had to take my game winning shot, it would be Kobe, Lebron, Jordan, or one of them…

But I’ve seen all of them miss game winners… MJ’s never missed… in fact, in Phil. 4:19, we are told, “And my God shall supply ALL your needs according to His riches in glory by Jesus Christ.”

 Now I don’t know about you, but there isn’t anyone walking on this earth right now that could top MJ…

And forgive me Kobe for what I’m about to say, but MJ’s better!

 ”Love is a losing game
Love can be a shame
I know, i’m a fool you see
For that fool is me
Tell me why
Tell me why”

Those are the words to Diana Ross’ “Why do Fools Fall in Love.”

The question I’m asking is, Why Be Fools? We need to learn to listen more… and not only listen, but understand. Because what’s so good about sitting down watching a game if you have no idea what you’re watching, who’s winning or any of that… it’s the same thing with life.

In love, in school, in politics, in the workplace, with parents or vice versa, a lack of understanding is at the root of our problems…

The good news is, the bible has everything… yes, I know somewhere sometime, at some point in your life you’ve heard that… you’ve gotten sick of people always saying the bible has this and the bible has that… me too!

The thing that upset me, wasn’t that I didn’t believe it, it’s just that no one ever showed me proof. Saying the bible has this and that was a cliche to me, similar to how “we” say, “God is good all the time,” yet can turn around and say, “I hate my life”… or something to that affect.

But when it comes to life, the bible really is the manual. Recently I got into a spat with my mom. We argued over boys. I was done. I was mad and so stuck in my ways. I heard everything she said, and understood NONE of it. She heard everything I said, yet understood NONE of it… she was probably a bit more into trying to understand me than I was trying to understand her. Me? I was boiling in my car, just ready to forget I even had a mother.

But every now and then, when I’m humble enough to listen, God tells me I’m wrong. So I called her back and it turns out that I she was speaking English and I was hearing Japanese. I felt so dumb and… well let’s just say, in my heart I was praying my mother could forgive me.

But this sort of thing happens all the time, I don’t have enough patience to listen and so I hear parts and interpret it the way I perceive it. Come on now, I know some of you do too. See, you’re doing it right now, not truly understanding what I’m saying…

But yes, that happens all the time. “We” have this problem where “we” feel that we’ve been around long enough to know what’s going to happen in every situation. That’s human nature. If you’ve been cheated on, then you’ve got a nose for a cheater. If you’ve been lied on then you’ve got a nose for a liar… we’ve been gifted and cursed by the phrase, “if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, then it’s a duck.” That’s true in some situations, but not all…

I just sort of feel like, we need to have opinions, but our hearts need to outweigh our opinions.

Some people like quotes, I’m a quote person… so this quote helps me,

“A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions.”

I know that quote has you like, “wow… that’s deep.” As much as I’d like to take the credit for that, I mean not that I couldn’t savvy something like that up, but the truth is that’s straight from the bible.

That’s Proverbs 18:2. Fools don’t like to listen. Fools don’t like to understand. Fools act without thinking and assume without knowing… FOOLS…

Fools would rather dying holding on to their opinion rather than live admitting they were wrong. Fools have to have the last word. Fools refuse to listen to their parents or higher ups. Fools curse their husbands and curse their wives. Fools lie, cheat, and steal to get ahead. And the only difference between a fool and a wise man is that the wise man has figured out that he was once a fool.

Are you a fool?

 Tunette M. Callis