I was at a luncheon recently that was in effect a 20-year reunion. It was the fall evangelistic luncheon of the Christian Businessmen of Santa Clara County. Dennis Sheehan, an old friend of mine and a member of this church, invited me and a number of other men who had played football together on the Stanford team 20 years ago this fall. We were invited because the featured speaker was Jeff Siemon, who had also been a member of the Stanford football team, an all-American first-round draft choice to the Minnesota Vikings, and an all-pro linebacker for them. He is now in full-time ministry in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. So Dennis seized the opportunity to invite a number of former players to come to the luncheon and hear Jeff’s testimony.
We were all sitting together at the table, and it was a delightful time. I enjoyed seeing people I hadn’t seen since graduating. It was a wonderful mixture of jokes, memories, and catching up on the events of two decades gone by.
Then Jeff got up to speak. The essence of his message really took these men by surprise. He told football stories, and he was funny and engaging. But when he got to the heart of his message, which was to talk about his faith, what he said in effect was that the key times he remembers, looking back over a career that is exalted in the eyes of many, were times of failure, hurt, and inadequacy. He recalled receiving a devastating injury during his college career, and it was on that occasion that he gave his life to Christ. He talked about the final two years of pro ball when he no longer started for the Vikings, relegated to the bench and treated as an outsider, and said those were the best years of his pro career in terms of personal growth and influence with others. All of us have needs that we do not admit to ourselves if we can avoid it. We live in a society that is competitive, whether in athletics, in business, or in other areas. But it is facing failure, inadequacy, weakness, and need that really determines who we are. That was the essence of his message.
I spoke with one of the men at the table who had been a successful football player in college, and then had left the world of competitive athletics to enter the world of competitive business. He had gotten involved in a shady financial arrangement, trying to make it big. That had landed him in federal prison, and he was lucky he wasn’t serving a 20-year sentence. He had moved back to California from New York and was looking for answers in the New Age movement among other things. He later sent me a letter that chronicled his life just because we had talked about it. He was fascinated by what Jeff said, although he wasn’t yet ready to believe it.
For most of us, it is the weakest, most difficult moments that are the most important.