"God answers my prayers everywhere except on the golf-course."
Adversity
When Job was at the height of his suffering, his wife told him to curse God and die. Job replied “Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?” Job 2:9. We read in Job 1:20, that far from cursing God, Job fell to the ground in worship and said ..’The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised’Cyrille Domoraud had a Job-like World Cup in 2006. He arrived in Germany as captain of Ivory Coast – the first captain to lead his country to the World Cup. Then the coach does not pick him for the first two games. By the time he gets to play in the play in the third game, Ivory Coast are already eliminated from the competition. And in that final game he gets a red card (two yellow cards).
How do you cope with that? I had a chance to ask Cyrille about it last year. At first he gave me a good pro’s answer “That was the coach’s decision. Football’s like that. There are times when you think you’ll play and sometimes you don’t. It’s part of the job.”
I tried to push him further. He came back, “It was disappointing. As any high-level competitor would agree, you always want to be among the starting line-up. If it had been in a club, I would have reacted differently, but in this case it was the country! So I accepted it and, well, just got on with it”.
I probed further: surely he must have felt like cursing God (if not dying)? “No. I’ve only ever been able to thank God for being part of the World Cup, for being in the team. I always thank Him as it was He who enabled me to go to the World Cup, it was a miracle that we made in the games against Sudan and Cameroon; I think that was all thanks to God. I always thank Him for this great moment He gave me in my life, in my career…So I couldn’t really say “Why am I here at the World Cup, why aren’t I being picked, why this, why that…” I was just delighted to be there.
“I think that God was there in the midst of it all. God played a major role in all that, better said, He was covering all the details. I think that God was with us every step of the way”.
I found Cyrille’s answers amazing and humbling, an example to all of us as we face challenges in our life.