Fair Weather Fan

When it comes to football, my sons scornfully refer to me as a “fair weather” fan.

The recent Atlanta Falcons playoff game is a prime example. One of my sons has season tickets and during the height of the victory celebration after the Falcons won their division and made the playoffs, I sent him a text and asked him to get tickets for my wife and me to the playoff game in Atlanta. He did so, but later I discovered that my tickets were not near his prime location down near the playing field, but in the very top of the stadium where even with the assistance of binoculars the players would like ants.

It was not lost on me too that although the Falcons were favored to win, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that they might actually lose. I envisioned the comfortable theater in my home with its giant ten foot screen and if things started heading south how easy it would be to turn it off and go read a book versus being stuck in a very loud stadium full of beer drinking celebratory fans turned sour and fighting my way to a crowded parking lot in the freezing cold and then of course there would be the long drive back home to the plantation from Atlanta.

Sanity set in and I decided to sell my tickets to my other son and his friends.

The night of the game I put on my furry bedroom slippers and my most favorite pajamas; my wife made us some popcorn and Coke and we got settled in to watch the game from our theater with its comfy recliner chairs. Suddenly I got a text message from the son who had bought my tickets.

“I need oxygen!”

I laughed as I thought about his seats being three rows from the very top of the stadium. Then came the carnage, the Falcons played their worst game of the season and at half time after the second interception, assorted missed tackles, sloppy play, and other miscues, I left the game to the “all-weather” fans and retired to my bedroom and a good book.

My father visited not long ago and his ritual was to turn on Fox News when he got up every morning and leave it on all day and all night right up until he went to bed. Can you imagine watching Fox News ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT EVERY DAY AND EVERY NIGHT? Glenn Beck, Brett Bair, Sheppard Smith, Bill O’Reilley, Hannity, Great Van Sustern; I know the schedule as well as TV Guide.

EGAD!

Call me a “fair weather” news fan too, because just like watching a lopsided football game, when it comes to watching bad news the final score is good enough for me. I mean how much bad news can one person absorb? They aren’t in business to report good news; it is every sad and bad thing that happens anywhere in the world 24/7.

A man came to hear me speak the other night and afterwards I was signing some books and he stopped by to get one. He mentioned to me that he watched too much Fox News and after hearing me speak he had decided that he was going to start spending much of that time reading the Bible instead. I told him that he would notice an improvement in his life in more ways than one.

We don’t have to stick our heads in the sand like a big ostrich and avoid all bad news, but we don’t have to exasperate the situation by living, eating and breathing it 24/7 either. I encourage you to be a fair weather fan as much as is in your power to do so. There are plenty of good positive things going on this world if we will just look for them instead of dwelling on the bad negative things. Me, I like fair weather. I tolerate foul weather when I have to, but I prefer fair weather. I suppose that is why I love Jesus so much.

John 16:33
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”