THIRTY-THREE
#22On p. 33 Sarah is discussing her high-school basketball career. She also proceeds to one of the most momentous moments in her life. Here are two passages from the page.
She writes:
"In high school, I played basketball, my name next to number 22 on the varsity roster all four years. I mainly rode the bench during close games, until my senior year, because I played point guard behind a much stronger player, my sister Heather.
"Our team was made up of a group of best girlfriends...We were the Cinderella team my sophomore and junior years, having fallen short in hard-fought state championship games in back-to-back years. But as soon as Heather and her senior teammates graduated, the B-team finally had the opportunity to prove we had it in us."
And, further on down the page:
"By my senior year of high school, I had been praying that God wouldn't have in mind for my future one of the local boys I'd grown up with. I loved those guys a lot, but I looked at them all like brothers. I had just about given up hope that I would ever meet a guy I could really like as more than just a buddy. Then a new kid came to town.
"In late August 1981, my dad drove to Wasilla High to get his classroom ready for the start of the school year. That night at dinner, he had news to share.
" 'Stopped by the gym to talk with some of the coaches today,' he said. 'That new kid, Palin, was there. I watched him practice for a while. I can tell you right now, he's the best basketball player Wasilla's ever had.' " [end of p. 33; I shall continue with this account when I come to the commentary on p. 34]
What is the golden thread and bond of unity between these two passages? I think that it is humility. And I believe that "humility" is a word and a concept that is much misunderstood.
I think it can be confused with obsequiousness, with false and feigned modesty, with presumptuous pride masking and disguising itself as lowly self-abasement. But is this really what the word denotes and connotes?
Etymologically, the word ultimately derives from the Latin "humus," "ground," "earth." Would it be completely off the mark to assert that to be "humble" is to be firmly "grounded" in the solid "earth" and soil of reality?
True, the word "humility" does signify "lowness." But, lowness in RELATION to what? (All such terms, "lowness," "height," "smallness," "weightiness," etc. must be defined against, in relation to, something.) In this case, something or someone is "humble" if he/she/it stands in a proper relationship to the criterion of reality. And the ultimate REALITY is the Lord.
So, here is our Sarah, competitive and feisty and fearless as she was and is and always will be, admitting frankly that her sister was, what?, not just a "stronger" player than she was, but a "much stronger" one! Precisely because she perceives the way things ARE, and acknowledges truth, she is lifted up.
"Omnis qui se exaltat, humiliabitur; et qui se humiliat, exaltabitur."
"Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted."
Where did this honest, clear-sighted self-knowledge lead? In the end, to the state high-school championship game, where it was not skill and marvelous athleticism that were required so much as grit and guts and steely determination, as Sarah played on a stress-fractured ankle to help her squad win it all!!!
Because she admitted her limitations, the Lord revealed her strengths to her, and made her particular strong points the decisive force and factor on that marvelous and triumphant evening!
What about the latter citations? Don't we behold Sarah acknowledging that it is God who will select a spouse and partner for her? Only the Lord can fully read the hearts that He has made, can see the future, can see the fate and fortune of each one of us. Precisely, I think, because she placed her future and her happiness humbly into His hands and power, she was exalted, at just the right moment, by the revelation of her true and lifelong love.
And is it not striking that basketball was the thing that caught and captured her initial interest??
Because she did not try arrogantly to arrogate to herself a skill in hoops that she did not possess, the kind and JUST Lord used basketball, basketball precisely, as His instrument to draw and attract her at the beginning to Todd. Much else followed later on, of course, as we shall soon see in the coming pages. However, it all started with basketball!
Instrumentum exaltationis; instrumentum damnationis.
"Instrument of exaltation; instrument of damnation."
We may observe the opposite course of divine dispositions in the case of Haman in the Book of Esther: This criminal, Haman, is hanged on the very gallows that he, in his overweening arrogance, has prepared for the just and righteous Mordecai!
