Road Games

For several years, I coached a middle school boys basketball team that played in a church league. At least half of our games were played on the opponent’s home court where their surroundings were as familiar to them as they were unfamiliar to us. Most of the fans there supported and rooted for their players, not ours. In these less than ideal environments, it was critically important that our team focus on what we were there to do: work together to play basketball to the best of our ability. On offense – make crisp, accurate passes; take good shots. On defense – play as much with your feet as with your hands; box-out the other team’s players when rebounding. These challenging situations made us look forward to getting back to playing at our home gym.

Over the years of working outdoors with a camera, I’ve had a lot of “road games,” venturing into new and unfamiliar surroundings. For example:

Walking with great difficulty in extremely forceful wind

Experiencing bone-chilling cold

Trekking across rocky, risk-filled terrain

Having to extract cholla cactus spines from my jeans

Dealing with strength-sapping heat

Through all of these times, two things drove me. First, the goal of trying to take photographs that would convey the beauty and diversity of God’s creation. And second, the belief that I would eventually return home to a more familiar, welcoming environment.

In the Bible, there were lots of people who had an abundance of experience with road games. One of them that I’ve been reading about recently is Elijah. The first recorded “away” encounter for this man of God was in Samaria where he confronted King Ahab with the news that God had decreed there would be no rain or even dew for a while. Then Elijah was at Kerith Brook where he received nourishment courtesy of ravens until the brook dried up. He hit the road once again to Zarephath, where he was fed by a destitute widow. And then he journeyed to his well-known encounter with the prophets of Baal. Elijah never had “home field advantage” during all of these years. But this prophet had something that was even more important: a spirit of obedience to do what God called him to do.

It is important that I recognize that as wonderful as some experiences in my life have been and are, this earth is not truly home for me. In other words, in a broad sense, all of life this side of heaven is a road game. In his short book, The Prodigal God, pastor and author Timothy Keller provided an insightful perspective (from which I have selected a few excerpts, shown below):

In the beginning of the book of Genesis
we learn the reason why all people feel like exiles,
like we aren’t really home.

. . . we were created to live in the garden of God.
That was the world we were built for,
a place in which there was no . . . decay or disease.
. . . it was life before the face of God, in his presence.
There we were to . . . know, enjoy, and reflect his infinite beauty.
That was our original home, the true country we were made for.

However, the Bible teaches . . . we chafed under [God’s] authority.
. . . so we turned away, and became alienated from him,
and lost our home . . .

We may work hard to re-create the home we have lost,
but [the Bible says] it only exists in the presence
of the heavenly father from which we have fled.

The writer of the book of Hebrews provided this reminder for people of faith:

For this world is not our permanent home;
we are looking forward to a home yet to come.

– Hebrews 13:14 (New Living Translation)