Fall is the best time for sports.
College football Saturdays. NFL Sundays. Baseball pushing toward October. Soccer fields filled with kids. Gyms beginning to fill as basketball season approaches.
We love the heat of competition.
We love the final drive, the walk off hit, the last second shot, the comeback nobody saw coming. We celebrate when our team wins and feel strangely miserable when they lose.
Why does winning matter so much?
C. S. Lewis often wrote about our deepest desires as clues. The things that awaken longing in us can function like signposts, pointing beyond themselves toward something larger. A beautiful landscape, a great story, a stirring piece of music can make us ache for something we cannot quite name.
Maybe competition does something similar.
At the heart of every game is a desire for the outcome to be settled. Someone wins. Someone loses. The scoreboard finally tells the truth.
We crave that kind of clarity because life rarely gives it to us.
Bad people prosper. Good people suffer. The guilty sometimes escape consequences. The innocent sometimes pay a terrible price. We look around and know instinctively that things are not as they should be.
We want the score settled.
That longing is part of our desire for justice.
We want evil exposed. We want wrongs made right. We want the story to end properly.
And Christianity makes the staggering claim that this longing is not foolish.
There really is a final victory.
The cross did not look like one. Jesus was mocked, beaten, crucified, and buried. His enemies seemed to have won. His disciples scattered.
The scoreboard appeared final.
Then came Sunday morning.
Jesus walked out of the grave.
Sin did not win. Death did not win. Evil did not win.
Jesus did.
The resurrection is God’s announcement that the darkest moment in the story is not the final chapter. There is a King, there is justice, and there will be a day when everything crooked is made straight.
Lewis once described our world as enemy occupied territory. Christianity, he said, is the story of the rightful King landing in disguise and calling us to join His great campaign.
That makes every earthly victory only a shadow.
So enjoy the games this fall. Cheer loudly. Celebrate the comeback. Feel the tension when the clock is running out.
But pay attention to that longing to see someone win.
It may be another signpost pointing you home.
We were made to long for the final victory.
And in Jesus, it has already begun.
