NCAA Division 1 Basketball Tournaments start this week. Both for the men and the women. I follow them in pretty closely. And I’ll watch some of the women play. Especially Kaitlyn Clark. These tournaments are known as the Road to the Final Four. This is also the time of the year that high school teams in Missouri are done playing for a state championship. The NBA season is beginning to move towards the playoffs as well. I love this time of year. To me, there’s not much better to watch than March Madness.
This time of year makes me think about Coach Armstrong. We would talk about the matchups. We would talk about the games we watched. The players that were making the biggest impact. I always looked forward to our conversations. As much as I enjoyed talking about basketball, he would always shift the conversations to life lessons. Definitely a skill that he was amazing at. One thing he used to say was, “You better have your ducks in a row.” Basically saying, you better be prepared. You never know what’s coming. Not only was he talking about basketball, he was talking about life. And he was spot on. If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. Preparation in basketball takes practice. Perfect practice. That’s how you get better. Hard practice leads to easy games. The same can be said about life.
We aren’t promised tomorrow. We aren’t promised the next few minutes. We never know what’s coming around the corner. Or when the end is going to be here. When we are born, we are promised one thing. There will be an end. So maybe we need to look at our lives. Maybe we need to take inventory and make sure that we are prepared. And the only way to be prepared for eternity is to have Jesus in our lives. That’s the only way to ensure that we are ready. The only way. There’s no question. There’s no alternate. The only way is through Jesus. If you don’t know Jesus, let’s talk. Let’s make sure you are prepared. Let’s make sure you are ready for when life here ends. If you do know Jesus, make sure that you are living life like he wants you to. Love him. Love others. Serve the world. Let’s do these things for others will also have eternity with Jesus waiting for them.
