March 25, 2025

Hi Friends,

Have you seen them? They’re a great invention — foam soccer balls. They can look like real soccer balls. You can kick them, head them, and do everything with them that you can do with a leather soccer ball, but they’re soft!! They don’t hurt your foot when you kick them. They don’t destroy furnishings when you play inside a house. When you poke them, you don’t stub your finger. The ball absorbs the pressure and then returns to its original shape. Foam soccer balls have only one downside so far as I can see (unless you count the number of indoor objects broken during a now possible game of indoor soccer in the living room!). This was demonstrated to me on Sunday morning by my little friend, Sylvan. He was so excited to show me his lime green soccer ball and how he could kick it. Then he stopped and said, “Broken.”

Sure enough, when I looked closely, I saw that a section of the soccer ball had been torn away. His father, Zach, informed me that the ball doesn’t handle freezing temperatures very well. It had been left outside and, when someone had tried to kick it, it tore away from a piece that remained frozen to the ground.

The Merriam Webster online dictionary defines resilience as: ‘the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress; an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change’. Resilience is a foam soccer ball — it takes the blows but returns to its original shape (except for that unfortunate freezing problem). Resilience is also a very necessary quality in the life of a apprentice of Jesus.

Resilience matters for at least two reasons. The first one is obvious. Jesus warned us that the world would hate us because it hated him first. Others remark that the world is ‘no friend to grace.’ The simple fact is that life as a follower of Jesus can be difficult. We all encounter setbacks, disappointments and unfulfilled desires. It requires resilience to bounce back (pun intended) and to keep going despite the setbacks.

The second reason is not so readily apparent. Because we are disciples in process, we fail and create problems (for ourselves or others). We become discouraged, wondering if we will ever ‘get it’ or whether this commitment is ‘worth it.’ We consider giving up on this process of God shaping us to be like Jesus. It seems to hard, almost unattainable. Hence, we need resilience — the ‘the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress; an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change’.

Forgiveness and hope are what create resilience. We learn to forgive those who hurt us or to forgive ourselves (and seek forgiveness) when we fail. We keep our hope firmly based in God’s ability to graciously change us rather than our ability to change ourselves. We choose the way of Joseph: “what you meant for evil, God meant for good.” We learn. We move on.

Blessings!

Doug