What's Most Important?

Family, friends, teammates, and the world were all in shock when they learned that Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher fatally shot his girlfriend before driving to the NFL football team's training facility and shooting himself last Saturday. 

On the very next day, the grieving Chiefs decided to proceed with their scheduled game against the Carolina Panthers.  The Chiefs won the emotion-filled game, but all would agree that the outcome of the game was not the important thing.

Chiefs quarterback Brady Quinn was asked to share his thoughts about the tragedy in a press conference after the game.  Commenting on Quinn’s remarks, Mike Florio said, “Quinn’s post-game remarks were eloquent and heartfelt and they captured perfectly one of the things we risk losing as a society that communicates primarily in snippets of misspelled words and emoticons.”

“The one thing people can hopefully try to take away, I guess, is the relationships they have with people,” Quinn told reporters after the game. “I know when it happened, I was sitting and, in my head, thinking what I could have done differently. When you ask someone how they are doing, do you really mean it? When you answer someone back how you are doing, are you really telling the truth?”

“We live in a society of social networks, with Twitter pages and Facebook, and that’s fine, but we have contact with our work associates, our family, our friends, and it seems like half the time we are more preoccupied with our phone and other things going on instead of the actual relationships that we have right in front of us. Hopefully, people can learn from this and try to actually help if someone is battling something deeper on the inside than what they are revealing on a day-to-day basis.”

Thank you, Brady Quinn, for the wake-up call!

Relationships.  That’s what life is all about.  Yet, all too often we take our relationships with family and friends for granted.

And there is one relationship that is THE most important: our relationship with GOD, for this is the relationship that will save us and give us eternal life in a place where “there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." – Revelation 21:4

Sin disconnects, divides, and destroys us and our relationships with others and with God (Isaiah 59:1-2).  But God loves us so much that He gave His Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins (John 3:16).  Through Jesus, we can be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:17-21) and receive the gift of eternal life (Romans 6:23).

Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we can be reconciled to God by placing our faith and trust in Him (Acts 16:30-31), turning from sin in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confessing Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and being baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of our sins (Acts 2:38).  The blood of Jesus continues to cleanse us from our sins and keeps us in fellowship with God as we continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7).

We may not be able to make sense of the tragedy involving Belcher, his girlfriend, and their families.  But may it cause us to come to our senses and recognize the importance of our relationships – especially our relationship with God!

Won’t YOU establish a saving relationship with the Heavenly Father by accepting His offer of salvation, life, and relationship by trusting and obeying Jesus?