masking & unveiling

I don't follow the NFL the way I do the NBA. (Unusable Magic tickets, anyone? I'm SO your girl.) But you can hardly be alive and have the TV on and not know that the New England Patriots pulled off the first 16-0 season ever last night, besting the fabled 14-0 pulled off by the '72 Miami Dolphins.

Digression ahead: What's up with people like Tom Brady, anyway? I mean, he looks like this, he dates supermodels, and he's the QB of one of the best pro teams in football history. If he's in heaven with me, and there's any literal truth to "the first shall be last" portion of theology, I look forward to telling him exactly how I'd like my toilet scrubbed.

Anyway.

So the Pats win last night, squeaking by a Giants team who came very close to waking them up from the dream, and they enter the record books. The people go nuts.

All the people except their coach, that is.

His name is Bill Belichick, and here's an excerpt from his postgame comments: "There are things we need to do a better job of and hopefully we will fix them for the next time out. We didn't play our best football game.....we have plenty of things that we need to work on."

Where are the congratulations, Bill? The contentment? The deep breath of relaxation?

Don't go looking for it, friends, because it's not there. And that is one of the main reasons that the Pats became the Pats. There will be no rest for them, because as we all know this side of heaven, perfection isn't really perfection at all.

All perfection means here is that only for a moment, you're better than the other guys. If you want your moment to linger -- if you want lasting greatness here on earth -- you'd better keep pushing yourself or someone else will push right past you, even if it takes them 35 years to do it.

It's in our nature to want to stand out, to excel at something, to be unique, to win. Since we're created in the image of God, I have to believe that this trait is something He put there. We've twisted it, perhaps, and made too much of it, but at its core I believe it is part of the divine imprint. Just think of David, the man after God's own heart, stepping forward to bring down Goliath at the feet of his brothers and a cowardly king. We all love -- and long to be -- the hero.

Here's the kicker, though: to me, life lived in pursuit of perfection seems in direct opposition to the life lived in need of grace. There was no grace for the Pats from Bill Belichick for giving up 35 points to the Giants offense, even if the result was a history-making check in the win column. And there's hardly ever grace from the little Belichicks that live in our own heads when we fail to do what we think we ought to be doing. As someone who definitely errs on Bill's side of things, life is often a confusing tightrope walk over the canyons of being all I can be and cutting myself some slack. And yet, I don't want to stop doing all I can with what I've been given.

I read Jesus' comments again recently about his yoke being easy and his burden being light. In the past, I've focused on the "easy" and "light" parts of this comment, but this time I realized that the "yoke" and "burden" parts are still in there.

Maybe what God offers is a life with the "yoke and burden" of throwing your life into the fight with your five smooth stones, but the "easy and light" peace of trusting Him with the outcome of the battle. Whether the Giants beat you or not.