As I write this, my fantasy football team is losing by 58 points. For those not up on the world of fantasy sports, that’s a lot. Basically, I need Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers to throw 7 touchdowns in the next 30 minutes. While he’s good, that’s not likely. My wife loves the fall because of changing leaf colors and pumpkin spice lattes. I love fall because of a silly game where I get to guess who will play well or not. It’s become something of a tradition that I get child-like excited for. It’s also a way for me to stay connected to my friends that live 7 hours away.
Those friends are good ones. One of them I met during my first summer working at Park River Bible Camp in northeastern North Dakota. Another was the guy who taught me to play volleyball and inadvertently taught me how to coach it, something that is a big part of my life now. Yes, we get on the phone every once in a while and pick up where we left off, but for a few months we talk two or three times a week. This seemingly meaningless tradition has helped me keep my friendships alive.
When I think about it, that happens quite a bit. Some of our best friends are relationships that formed because we decided that one thing we would do together as regularly as possible is go to church. The annual Boundary Waters Canoe Area trip is a key experience for me to reconnect with my closest friends and mentors, and with God.
Maybe there’s something to that, something special that happens when we experience life with other people in repeated ways, at some sort of regular interval – a tradition. That’s been true for experiencing life with God too. As a man, trying to figure out what it means to follow Him, apparently I need some tradition to guide me.
God bless the traditions that bring me back to good places in my head and heart. God bless the people that I experience them with. God bless fantasy football.
Post by Jared Rendell.
These thoughts were inspired by a dive into comparing sports rituals and traditions with faith rituals and traditions in the “Give Me a ‘J’” activity on Vibrant Faith at Home. It also brought on some good memories of living across the street from the school hockey arena and seeing “the crazies” before home games.
Vibrant Faith Ministries 
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