Not For Us

I remember a team with a reputation for playing nasty on the field. We dreaded playing them yearly because they spoke hatefully and committed harsh fouls. One year, they even tackled one of our teammates once the ball was out of play, resulting in her tearing her ACL.

It’s safe to say we were boiling when we faced that same team again the following year. We all wanted revenge for what they did to our teammate, and our anger seemed uncontrollable. What made it worse was this team knew that they had made us angry; they seemed to get more joy the angrier we got, and we were playing right into their hand.

Right before the game, the coach saw that the other team’s goal was to make us as angry as possible and thus distract us from playing well because we were all consumed with revenge. He addressed us and told us that if we went out there and played with anger and revenge in our hearts, we would lose.

So, at that moment, we all decided to do the hardest thing: forgive and love them. It wasn’t easy by any means, but we were not chained to the anger anymore, and we could go out on the field and play our game without worrying about avenging our teammate. The other team had lost any hold they had over us.

Our choice to love shattered any chance hate had of winning that day. Just like it says in Romans 12:21, “Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good.”