CHAPTER 2
A PLAYER OF LIFE
We are familiar with soccer teams; Chelsea, Manchester united, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and their likes. Some persons fan these teams. A collection of players and coaching crew make up these teams. Often, these players may be renowned or at the start of their football career. A team buys players because the coach considers them good enough for the role he intends them to play for the overall good of the team.
Have you considered playing in a team called Life? You do have a club side in life and all the persons you see around you are fellow teammates. Every player wishes to play for a big club, in a great championship or in a grand stadium. Better still, the players want to play in the final and even win the championship. In team life, you have the best stadium on the earth. You may not have a variety of stadia to play on like football players do but you do have a variety of scenarios to challenge.
Those players on the pitch do not all play the same role. The role each player plays varies with his or her capacity, technique, strength, speed, and tactics. While some players do have a variety of capabilities, some do have just one, yet they do have to play as a team. As humans, we have diverse talents and capacities. These capabilities differ from person to person but we do have to apply these talents as a whole with other persons. Our individual talents will be useless without the touch of skill from another. While we play in the game of life, we need others too. Our iron has to sharpen another person’s iron. Everyone around us has a varying role to play. Some are parents, guardians, teachers, doctors, scientist etc., but they do have to work together for the common good. Whatever one's capacity may be, however, illiterate or literate, we are in the game of life because each one of us is important. No one must play down on our usefulness.
A team would not be successful without the inspiration and tactical capacity of the coach. You do have a coach too. God is the coach. He ultimately positions us where best fits us. He has the ultimate formation and knows how you would technically fit into life. He could possibly have placed you in some other continent but he placed you where you are because he has deemed it fit for you to play your role with his guidance where you are. God knows who you would be, something you are blind to.
Though God stands as a coach on the sidelines, he still allows us the initiative to think and make decisions. He is not making the decisions for us. He only acts as a guide allowing us the absolute choice. He knows how talented we are and he expects that we will bring our talents to bear in the position he has positioned us.
Players play for the overall good of the team as well as for personal achievement too. They do want to see their team win while they also want to win individual laurels too. In life, there are many laurels to challenge. While we pursue individual goals and laurels, we are also to pursue goals for the common good of man.
Football players do have periods of personal challenges. Sometimes they suffer from injury worries and at other times, it could be a dip of form. These periods are depressing yet players often manage to come through it. We do have challenges over the course of life. In the face of these challenges, we have to affirm our place and fight for a starting shirt. We have to challenge those bugging situations. However daring a situation may be, we will come out of it if we decide to fight on without giving up. Remember tough times never last but tough persons often do outlast their challenges. You can take solace in the fact that however bad your present predicament is, it has to happen somehow so that you can become a better player and challenger.
Sometimes the coach deems it fit to replace a player in a game. The player may be doing well yet the coach replaces him because he seeks to protect the player for future games. In other cases, the player may be unfit thus prompting the coach to replace him so that the game may improve. When replaced from our present position, it is because there is a better position out there we will have to fit.
Finally, after a long spell playing, players retire from the game. Someday after all the hassles of this life, we will retire. We determine the quality of life after retirement by how well we have performed and amassed during our years of strength. Now that you have the strength to play in this game called life, play well, and be sure to always win.