The Unthinkable

"For nothing is impossible with God." - Luke 1:37

Last night I had the privilege of watching a great finish to an intense basketball game in the semi-finals of the Class B, District 6 basketball tournament between Gering and Alliance.

The game was actually quite boring for the 1st 3 and 1/2 quarters of the game as Gering's pressure packed defense held Alliance to a mere 9 points through this point in the game. At this point in time, Gering had all of the momentum it could have hoped to muster and it looked like a sure thing that Scottsbluff and Gering would be going head to head in the finals for a trip to the State Tournament (Scottsbluff had won the other semi-final in the previous game in overtime against Sidney).

But then as we have seen so many times in sports, the unthinkable happened as Alliance came roaring back in this defensive battle. It seemed as though all of a sudden Gering couldn't score at all and one of the region's top players, Alliance's 6'6" senior Zach Boness decided to drop 14 points in the fourth quarter to lead Alliance to what many people at the time thought was going to be an impossible victory with the final score being 39-35. Alliance with the win.

In the local newspaper the next day, Zach Boness was quoted as saying "I just thank God because without Him none of this would have been possible." Whether Zach knows it or not, he is actually refering to a Bible verse found in the book of Luke chapter 1, verse 37 when an angel of the Lord came to Mary to report to her that as a virgin, she would give birth to the Son of God, Jesus himself. As many of us would do, Mary wonders how this would be possible and the angel then says, "Nothing is impossible with God."

It is very possible that Zach's quote in the paper was intended to give Glory to God for Alliance's great comeback win, but let's look at this quote from Gering's perspective. I am quite sure that Gering would have liked to win that game pretty badly, so for them was the opposite true? Did God fail them during a time when they felt as though they should be winning this game and not Alliance? Absolutely not. God's purposes and desires are completely different than man's purposes and desires a lot of the time. You bet God cared who won and who lost that game last night and it was all for the purpose of bringing himself glory. From our perspective, we can't see what all God wanted to do with the lives of those involved in the game last night. But God sees each individual heart of each athlete and coach that competed and his desire is that He would have a relationship every one of them both on and off the court. So what does that mean for Gering? Well, I guess God wants to use Gering losing a basketball game they should have won to teach them each something. Maybe it is that without Him, at the end of the day, it really didn't matter if you won or lost, you still don't have Him. Or maybe He wanted to teach the Gering Bulldogs about how to handle losing for His Glory because believe it or not, we don't win every game we play.

So is it really true that "Nothing is impossible with God"? Absolutely, especially when our desires are the same as God's.

Nate Lewis
Area Representative
Western Nebraska