Preparation

The season starts here.

This is the week when the players return for preseason training, something that largely determines where they get to in the football season to come.

It is 30 plus degrees today.  It is a long way from a winter's night in Hartlepool.

There is grass, but goalposts and lines will be replaced with cones and slalom posts.

No crowd roars, cheers or jeers.  Maybe an odd(!) chaplain stands and watches sympathetically (not empathetically).

In itself it is pointless.  Grass, running, a field, sweat.  It is all about the prize of victories (and bonuses) in the autumn, winter and spring.

The work of God's people on earth is not the end but a means to an end.  Making disciples really means calling people to pre-season training!

Paul wrote: I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.  Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last for ever.  Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.