Jesus is Better than the Super Bowl!

Psalm 33:6  By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

Once a year in the United States, on a Sunday evening in late January or early February, most televisions are tuned to the Super Bowl, the championship game in the National Football League.  The two best American Football teams vie for the coveted Super Bowl trophy, an award that most of these athletes have been dreaming about since they were young boys.  The Super Bowl is the pinnacle of their sport and also their chosen profession, so it is understandable when a player says that winning it would be the biggest achievement of their life; it would mean “everything” to them.

Understanding the importance of the game, it was refreshing to hear an interview in 2013 with a member of the coaching staff on one of the Super Bowl’s participating teams.  In that interview Seattle Seahawks Assistant Coach Rocky Seto asserted a few simple, yet powerful words: “Jesus is better than the Super Bowl”.

That statement is elementary yet so profound in that it really puts life into perspective.  For athletes or fans the big championship game can become the world to them.  Depending on your sport or your native country it might be football’s (soccer’s) FA Cup, it might be the Indian Premier League Cricket title, or it might be on the biggest stage in the world – the Olympics.  If you are in pursuit of that prize, it can become everything to you, yet Coach Seto reminds us that “Jesus is better than….”.

Pastor Louie Giglio has delivered numerous talks with accompanying pictures and digital re-creations of our incredible universe.  His talks “Indescribable” and “How Great Is Our God” have been viewed by millions through YouTube.  He walks us through the awesomeness of our known universe showing the vast size of just a few of the billions of stars.  In his presentation he begins his walk through the stars with our Sun which could hold 960,000 earths in it, then Sirius, Pollux, Arcturus, Rigel, Betelgeuse, Antares, Mu Cephei, W Cephei and finally Canis Majoris.  According to Giglio, if the earth were a golf ball, Canus Majoris would be the height of Mt Everest.   7 quadrillion earths could fit inside it.  Even our massive sun is but a speck beside it.  And how did our God create this and all we have not yet discovered?  The Psalmist tells us he breathed it into being.

What does all this science have to do with winning the championship or dealing with issues you have going on in your life?  A good friend pointed out to me that the recognition of the absolute awesomeness of the universe gives him no choice but to shrink the importance of successes and diminishes the power of challenges.  Pastor Giglio calls it “a shrinking feeling, but a good shrinking feeling.  A glance into the universe re-sizes everything.”

Despite the vastness of the universe and our minute size in comparison, we are known, valued and loved by this magnificent maker.  Whatever your goals or whatever your challenges, undertake the healthy exercise of shrinking.  Revel in the awesomeness of God and his creation and ask him to put your life into perspective like the Psalmist did thousands of years ago.  You will recognize that “Jesus is better than…”

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet. (Psalm 8: 3-6)