“All I know most surely about morality and obligation I owe to football”,
Death
Death has climbed in through our windows and has entered our fortresses; it has removed the children from the streets and the young men from the public squares. Jeremiah 9:21The idea of death climbing in the window to get to somewhere it has no business to be is very striking. What a powerful metaphor!
Death is very much part of human existence and sport is not exempt. Two high profile suicides in European football of highly successful people for whom the pressure was simply too much to handle, shocked us. There was also the death in suspicious circumstances of the Kenyan Olympic champion. There have been so many suicides in cricket that David Frith has written two books on the subject By his own hand and Silence of the Heart.
In late 2011 several members of a Togolese Division 1 football team died when their bus crashed – the third tragic incident involving Togolese football in recent years. What makes sporting deaths more poignant is that in most cases it is, as the verse says, young men who have been removed from our world.
Paul refers to death as “the last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Corinthians 15:26). That phase is helpful because it makes death seriously, seeing it as an enemy. It also reminds us that death will be destroyed!
Death is the ultimate human tragedy and we should not make light of it. However, we believe that Jesus has conquered death and has promised to be with all who believe in him in life, in death and beyond death, leading into life in all its fullness which will last forever.