A few weeks ago we had a team come out from Fresno State to play some games with our kids. It was so exciting to see new games and new ways to engage the kids and to have fun, but that wasn't the thing that stood out in my memory from that Saturday. What I remember most is one kid who was not having any fun. He had been poked in the eye by his brother and was trying not to cry when I walked up to him. He wouldn't look at me because he was tearing up. He yelled at me and told me to go away because what he had always been taught was that crying was for girls. So I gave him some space.
A couple minutes went by and I came back up to him to make sure he was okay. He was mad and sad and scared, because getting poked in the eye is terrifying, I don't care how old you are. He started throwing every bad word he knew at me one after the other. I just sat by him and listened, and after he had finished talking I suggested some different things he could do and told him to decide which was best. He told me to f$%# off and that he hated his brother and me. I calmly sat and talked about things with him. I think that confused him more than anything.
I don't think he'd ever been around an adult who didn't get mad and yell at him or hit him when he said bad words and told them he hated them. I doubt he'd ever seen someone who sat down and thoughtfully tried to solve a problem with words and love. It was completely new to him and it cut right through his walls. Love has a way of doing that.
I told him that Jesus says to pray for the people who are mean to us and then let him go play basketball by himself while the other kids played games together. After a few minutes he came up to me and asked if he could go back and play games with the other kids. He said he didn't think his brother was trying to hurt him and that it was probably an accident. I told him he could and he ran off and had fun with all the other kids for the rest of the day.
One reason Saturday Sports is so important is because when these kids see us living out the way of Jesus in something as concrete as how we solve our problems it teaches them how they should solve their own problems. This is especially true with the boys, a lot of whom have never seen a man solve problems without violence or anger. When we model love for these kids there is a chance they might one day learn to do it themselves. It doesn't matter how many Bible stories we tell if we aren't living out the redemptive, transforming love of Jesus in our problem solving. Without that we're just clanging symbols.