by Paul Braoudakis
Like many Americans, I’m excited about the upcoming football season. It’s a time like no other when these warriors get out onto the gridiron and leave everything they have on the field. They wrestle and claw and fight for every inch, becasue they know that ultimately, football is just a game of inches.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently and I’m realizing more and more that football is not much different than life; it’s just a game of inches. Every single day, we lock eyes with men and women who are inches away from eternity. They are inches away from a destiny that will either promote them or condemn them. What if we could really see people through those lenses?
Many of our students at TLC learned that the hard way. Many of them were inches away from death — with needles in their arms or guns pointed at their heads — but becasue of the unmerited favor of God, they were able to make the right decision to transform their lives, and they eneded up at TLC. We love those men back to health and many of them go on to live incredibly productive lives becasue they, too, realize that life is just a game of inches.
One decsion — good or bad — can produce two completely different outcomes. We live in this tension between two worlds and becasue we cannot see beyond the natural, we have no idea that most of the decisions we make can affect us forever because we are playing in a game where every inch matters.
Having been a board member at TLC for many years now, I’ve seen firsthand how many of our men were just inches away from divorce. Inches away from disaster. Inches away from bankruptcy. Inches away from death. But they made the hard decision. They made the right decision. They, like the football players who will take the field in a few weeks, learned that in this life you need to claw and fight and wrestle for every inch. They learned that winning this game requires more than just luck; it requires preparation, study, diligence and patience. And the rewards are so gratifying, because our God is so gracious.
I am so grateful to be a part of a ministry that fights for every inch and gives no ground to the enemy. The men at TLC, as well as the other men on our board, are my heroes. And and as long as they’re in the game, I’ll be in there with them — fighting for every inch.
Paul Braoudakis has been a TLC board member for more than 17 years. He lives in the suburbs of Chicago with his wife and son.