On being "picked for the team"

 

My match fishing career didn't last long- in fact it was just one solitary season in the year that I turned 14. My two brothers and I were part of the Dinton Pastures junior fishing team that competed in a small league with six other teams in the Farnham Junior League. Six anglers fished for each team in every match, points were awarded for position in section, and there were small prizes for all section winners. I won my section once (in the first match of the season) and, for my efforts, was awarded a reel case which I still have to this day. Ultimately, I discovered that the fish were the only competition I needed, and drew stumps on my match fishing career at the end of that season.

However, what I remember most about that year was not the pressure of fishing in the matches themselves, but of fishing in the "trials" for the team. Although all but one of the matches were fished on lakes or ponds, the trial was on a small river, and about 20 young anglers had to fish while the four adults who ran the team walked the banks and ran a judgemental eye over our fishing ability. Never has trotting a float, or swinging a small gudgeon or roach to hand seemed so fraught with nervous tension! At the end of the session we were all gathered together and about 8 or 9 names were read out, which led to elation for those of us selected, and disappointment for those who hadn't "made the cut."

I have similar memories of my 20 years of playing football. Of looking in the Thursday edition of the Reading Evening Post newspaper, who published the coming Saturday'steam line-ups for all the teams who played in the Reading and District League, to see if I was in the starting 11 or one of the (in those days) 2 permitted substitutes. Sometimes I was. Sometimes I wasn't.

There's something tremendously reassuring about being chosen. Scripture has much to say about those of us who are followers of Christ having been "chosen." But not just by Eric, Derek, Sam and Kevin Loddy's dad (they were the 4 guys who ran the fishing team), or by one of my many football managers, but by the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. That God chose me. (wow!)

Ephesians 1:4 talks about God "choosing us in Christ before the foundation of the world."  2 Thess 2:13 puts it this way: "God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation..." 

Now, a short blog on a fishing site isn't the place to go into the complicated discussion Christians have  about predestination and freewill, or how we balance the paradox that the Bible very clearly teaches God chose us but also that we have a responsibility to choose him, that God has made a decision for us before the world began, but that we need to make a decision for Him in time, but just for now remember what it was like to be that kid in the playground wondering if you'd be the last one to be picked (or possibly not even BE picked) for some game, and then revel in the fact that, despite all of your faults, shortcomings and (heck, yeah, let's use the word) sin, God loved you so much that he chose you, and said "I want you on my team."