[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

I think this will be the last post from this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament…but no promises!

Immediately after the Monday night championship game where Virginia defeated Texas Tech, an analyst opened panel discussion with something like, “Well, it was a great game even though it wasn’t the match-up most people were hoping to see.” Charles Barkley emphatically interrupted:

This is sports! you don’t get the match-up you want, you get the match-up that you get. Sports is not about who you know or about what the public wants, it’s about what the teams do during the games. (My best recollection!)

It’s a good point. Where else might it apply? If you’re a pastor, you don’t get the congregation you want but the congregation you have! At work, you may not get the colleagues or clients you want, but the ones you have. Neighbors? Same rules apply. Even family!

Jesus prayed all night and chose twelve men.

One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles:  Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. (Luke 6.12 – 16, NIV)

Look at the list: a traitor, four fishermen, a tax collector (Matthew) and a Zealot who hated tax collectors. It’s not the group I would have chosen, but the eleven (after the loss of Judas Iscariot) changed the world.

Let’s stay with the relationships God has given us and see what he wants to do through us where we are and whom we are with.

Friends, stay where you were called to be. God is there. Hold the high ground with him at your side. (1 Corinthians 7.24, MSG)