(Reader Warning: A great number of people will not care for this blog. In part because they will take it the wrong way. But part of why it may not be well received is because it may challenge them to consider something they feel uncomfortable considering. I know it was for me as I wrote it.)
I don’t know if you follow the news stories about tomorrow’s Super Bowl game or not. Deflated footballs, deceptive tactics, city preparation, pregame opportunities for children, analysis and statistics down to how many blades of grass should be on the field (wait, no, that’s baseball whose stats go to that extreme…football still measures with chains 20 yards away).
ANYWAY, some of the most striking reports have had to do with some of the finances. The average ticket price this year, according to various searches on the internet, was supposedly $2879.00 or thereabouts, depending on whom you believe (although GOOD seats start at $4500.00). But that’s only if you bought them in the first place. If you buy them “on the secondary market” (whatever THAT is) the average price is more likely around $5000.00. Or, according to some reports, maybe even $10,000. That will get you into the game with a place to sit. If you plan on GETTING to the game by CAR, you will need to park the car. That they are estimating will run you another $140.00. Must be a nice car. Or maybe it is a “designer” parking space. I’m not even going to GUESS how much a soda or hot dog might cost once you are inside the stadium, but if you are going, you may want to take a few bearer bonds or the deed to your house, just in case you want nachos, too. And unless you happen to live there, this list doesn’t even include the cost of getting there and where you will stay while you are in town!Then there is the cost of commercials. Like many things in our world, they have gone up in price. Supposedly 7% higher than last year. Which translates to $4.5 million. (May have to mortgage the jet, too.) If you added in the players’ and coaches salaries, the expenses to pay the regular people who clean the place and cook the hot dogs, the money transferred over memorabilia and licensing and halftime and money spent on snacks for Super Bowl parties and…well, you get the idea. (And you thought the national debt was a lot of money!)Let me focus on the seat prices. Forget the $10,000 seat, let’s assume you purchased a seat the first day, and only took an “average” seat…(which is behind the poles under the press box), so you got the bargain price of $2879.00 reserved in your name. And then just as you are about to give them your credit card number, you notice a flyer on your table from, say, Compassion International asking you to sponsor a needy child. You are faced with the dilemma of having that just average seat without even parking your car or eating a hot dog or making a commercial, OR, you could use your $2879.00 to pay the monthly sponsorship for that child so he can eat each day for 6 years, 3 months and about 24 days. Oh, and the child would also get medical checkups, health and hygiene training, educational assistance, access to surgery and disaster relief and mentoring to understand their value as creations of God for whom Christ died. But then, you’d have to watch the game on tv. Wait, it isn’t a game. Yes, occasionally somebody will say it is just a game, like for that player whose wife might have a baby tomorrow very inconveniently forcing him to have to choose where to be….but real life is, everybody knows it isn’t just a game. It’s an EVENT! It is the SUPER bowl. Seat at the event….starving child….it’s just so hard to decide. Sadly, for far too many of us, it isn’t. If the price of one AVERAGE ticket could care for a kid for six years, imagine what the price of a good seat could do, or a viewing box. OR what would be available if a player, coach or referee decided to forego his salary for just that one game, or if the NFL told the networks to forego their payment and send it to Compassion instead. You might have to give up a seat at a Super Bowl game, but you would probably get a really good seat at the Messianic banquet table for eternity. And that kid might just get to sit right next to you there.I know I am picking on football here, but you can apply it so many places: jewelry, clothing, houses, automobiles, luxury travel, wasted food from gourmet restaurants (or even our own refrigerators). I have even heard the application made to such things as how much we spend here in the United States on weddings or funerals. I am surrounded by things in my home that could also be used for illustration, when comparing them to people who have no home, no food, no clothing, no safe water supply, no chance for an education.It is a hard thing to face, but most of us have “Super Bowl tickets” of some sort, while hundreds of children die needlessly every hour of every day.
Compassion isn’t the only agency that cares for starving children, I know, but it is one that I especially admire, in part because it does more than just feed the children. I have always been struck by the fact that when Jesus talked about these things, he said that whatever we do to people like those starving children, we also do to him. Does that mean we can’t have anything or enjoy anything? That seems doubtful. I do think we are remiss if we do not ever stop and give serious thought to our lives regarding these things…and too often we do not. Many would use the word “balance” as the key, and perhaps they are right. But somehow I think the word “priorities” is a more important word. It doesn’t have anything to do with the topic of divorce, I know But then again, given the word “priorities,” maybe it does.
