Are You There, God? It's Me, Tim Tebow

We interrupt our regularly scheduled daughter-focused blogging for a little football talk.  After all, I DO have a son too...

The rest of the blogging and media world has weighed in on something about Tim Tebow.  Until now, I have felt very little compulsion to join them.  Until now.

Earlier today I stumbled upon this quote: 
"The universe has a trillion stars," he says. "Ninety five percent of it is dark matter. It's hubris to think the Creator of all that wants the Broncos to win a football game."

I got curious about the source of this statement and did a little googling, winding up here, on an article about Tebow written from an atheist perspective.

See, usually I'd agree.  It seems silly that God would care about the Broncos (certainly He is aware that college football, and SEC football in particular, is imminently more important).  I believe that He created everything--all that dark matter and the places and things I can't comprehend.  Looking at the world around me, I find it easy to believe in a God who is bigger, wiser, stronger than me.  And I find it hard to believe that He would be consumed by a football game in Colorado.  

For that matter, it seems silly that He'd care whether my next meeting goes well, whether I find a good parking space, whether my children obey today.  Sure, He cares about the Big, Important Stuff, but the little stuff?  That's just silly.  An all-powerful God who bothers himself with the mundane details?  A fairytale.  Something we believers have invented to console ourselves about our own pointless existence.  Right?

But this distinction between the Big Important Stuff and the little stuff that God doesn't care about, well, it's a Lie.  And it catapults me down a spiral of my own logic--how do I know what He cares about?  how do I know when something is from Him and when it's just a coincidence?  and how do I know what to pray about?  why pray about the little stuff, since He doesn't care about it?--until I ultimately land at the bottom, alone and self-reliant, resolved to just handle everything on my own.

Oh, the danger of these thoughts.  But He reminds me--All of it.  He cares about all of it, as hard as that may be to believe.  

I know this because He says He does.  He cares about me, this little dot in Alabama.  He cares about my successes and failures, about the details.  He knows every hair on my head (and there are lots, graying more every day).  He knows my thoughts, when I sit and when I rise.  

And He cares about Tim Tebow too. His wins and losses.  

Yep, that's right.  I just said that God cares about football.  I feel like one of the team chaplains I've rolled my eyes about for years.  (Does this mean that God wants my beloved Rebels to lose?  Really?  Maybe he wants Hugh Freeze to win??)

But here's the thing:  Does this mean that Tebow and I (or, apparently, Ole Miss) are assured victory?  No.  God may not see victory as a necessity.  He may in fact see defeat or struggle as the means to bless us.  How often our world confuses the two, victory with blessing.   But God is not confused by them. He gives the victories and He gives the defeats. But He cares.  He is in them.  And He is for us.

When the losses come, as they likely will for Tebow and for us, we can rest in the knowledge that He is good, that He is near, in the victory and the loss. And in all things we can give thanks.

So, despite my pious hesitation to say it, thank you Tim Tebow for reminding me that God is in the little stuff--even NFL football--because His people are in the little stuff.  And He has demonstrated His love for us.

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
   nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
   and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
   and there be no herd in the stalls,  
yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
   I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
GOD, the Lord, is my strength;    
he makes my feet like the deer's;    
he makes me tread on my high places.

So what about you?  Do you, like me, find it hard to believe that He cares about the details?  Do you seek Him in the little things, believing that He is there?