I love basketball. I played in high school. I still play a couple times a week. A few weeks back I had a very rewarding game. Our team won on an easy layup by my teammate. I had set a screen for him that made him open, so that he could score easily. Setting a screen is positioning oneself to block a teammate’s defender, so that the teammate can then easily make it to the basket or be open for a shot without the defender being close to him.
Had I not set the screen, he wouldn’t have been able to score. Though he scored the basket, I had great satisfaction. I knew what I had done. To the casual fan who may not know much about basketball, he could have looked at the game-winning play and only seen the player who scored the winning basket. However, if there had been a coach watching, he would have seen the screen that I had set and known that without it, the score wouldn’t have happened. Setting a screen may not get the accolades from the fans, but it does from the coach.
It's the same with our Father. He is the Coach who is positioning the players on the court. Some set screens, some score. If the Coach has called me to set a screen but I insist on only trying to score, our team won’t win. The Coach knows best. I don’t.
The enemy constantly wants us to compare ourselves to others with envy and jealousy and condemnation. My assignment won’t look like yours, nor yours, like mine. I need to constantly remind myself of this. Just this week I was reading about a pastor who was very successful in ways that I wanted to be, and I started to feel inadequate, jealous, inferior. He was “scoring” so to speak, when I was “setting screens.” The Father reminded me that this man was doing his assignment, and I was doing mine. Ah yes… setting screens… if that is what the Coach wants… I’m in!
Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 1 Cor. 12: 15-26
