Let’s worry about us…

I am an unabashed University of Kentucky basketball fan.  As one of my shirts so eloquently proclaims, “I bleed blue”…and not that powdery Carolina blue…nope, full blown UK Wildcat blue.  The current head coach of UK, John Calipari, has on his website occasional videos that provide a glimpse into practice, team meetings, etc…one such video I watched the other day was of the team’s road trip to Baton Rouge to play LSU.  Toward the end of the video, in a team meeting, Calipari is exhorting the ‘Cats to play their game and not worry about what LSU does.  He’s getting them to understand if they will just do what they need to do, the game will turn out right.  He says:

“Let’s worry about us and do what we’re supposed to do.  The rest of it will take care of itself.”

I love this approach.  As a coach, you can only prepare so much on the other team.  They might throw out a new offense or defense – they might have a guy come off the bench who averages 2.5 points per game to score 20.  You never know.  All you can do is get your team to play their way, and focus on their strengths.

I wonder about this approach as a Christ-follower and a member of the church, both local and universal.  I think how often we get distracted by our opponent (who, for clarification, is not liberal, nor Democrat/Republican, nor Hollywood, etc…).  I read the Bible, and see how powerful the Gospel of Christ was and I wonder, “Why are we not seeing more amazing things today?”  Maybe it’s because we’ve stopped worrying about us…not in a way where we stop being concerned about others; no, I fear we have stopped worrying about us, and stopped doing what we’re supposed to do because of our unfounded fears and overly hyped paranoia.  Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against His church.  Do we really believe that?  I think if we did, we’d worry less about government intrusion, the decline of morality, and other straw man obstacles that really don’t stand in our way.  If we worried less, we’d have more time to focus on who we are and what we have – the message of good news that sat a world ablaze long before Twitter, Facebook, or texting.

“Let’s worry about us and do what we’re supposed to do.  The rest of it will take care of itself.”  Are you with me?