Have you ever watched a cricket match? Cricket is a very popular sport in countries where there was substantial British colonization efforts. In its original format, a typical cricket match will last anywhere from seven hours to more than three days. When I learned about this length of time, I immediately wanted to know if there were shorter formats and if they used highlight reels for TV coverage.
It’s interesting to think about highlight reels because they condense an activity, however long it lasts, into a few seconds of the most important moments. An activity may take days to accomplish, like cricket, but the highlight reel is often what gets the most attention because of its brevity and the scoped focus. A highlight reel shows the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory, so to speak.
Unfortunately, society has become addicted to highlight reels, in my opinion, at the expense of practice, endurance, character, substance, education, understanding and heaps more. If we aren’t careful and purposeful, the effects of such snippets can cause us to be vulnerable to click baits, snap judgments, misunderstandings and even impatience.
If we only looked at the highlight reels in the Bible of King David’s life, we’d probably see David:
- holding up Goliath’s head
- getting crowned as Israel’s king
- kissing Bathsheba
- holding the dead body of his son, Absalom
- crowning Solomon to be king in his place
These highlights would probably show the most intense moments in David’s life but neglect to give us the texture and fabric of David’s life, along with many significant lessons we could learn from exploring his life in great depth. If we only look at the highlight reels in David’s life, we would likely miss getting to explore and enjoy the Psalms and applying valuable lessons from David’s life. In the same way, if you looked at the most intense snippets in my life, you wouldn’t know me.
I’m bringing this to your attention for you to consider if your relationship with God is a highlight reel, spotted with some interventions, miracles, fantastic experiences, etc. On the other side of doing a relationship with God in highlight reels, I would suggest that our God relationship can fill the minutes and hours of each day, creating connection, revelation, joy, strength and heaps more. To this end, we could say that living in daily fellowship with God can facilitate a life of “real highlights” rather than the seconds that shock from reel highlights.
When we choose to do our daily living with God, the real highlights can be experienced and described by Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 13:14, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” Let’s decide to live our lives in intimate connection with God so that our lives can overflow with Jesus’ grace, God’s love, and rich fellowship with Holy Spirit!
I would suggest that God’s grace, love and fellowship can be the best real highlights in which we can experience vibrant life! Let’s choose God’s real highlights rather than human reel highlights.
