Trinity and Humanity

I recently saw an ad for a very popular shoe brand and in the ad there is a sort of “con” taking place on a basketball court. We all know the kind right? A guy shows up on the basketball court pretending to be a really bad player and after he is picked by his undercover friend to play ball on his team the show begins! Only this con-game is a bit unique in that the bad player is really… well… kind of bad. In the advertisement the small weaker person is the bad player and he doesn’t seem able to even come close to scoring a basket. But when the game starts we see something amazing. We see the bad player lobbing terrible shots at the goal and not even coming close. Thankfully his friend on the team is an excellent player and is steadily grabbing the ball in mid-air and slam dunking it through the hoop. When I first saw the commercial I was intrigued and then Nike™ and their Ad Agency hit it home for me in a great big Gospel way. During the commercial the bad player looks at the camera , right after his friend dunked his errant shot, and said, “I never miss!” I thought to myself, “That’s it… that’s the Gospel!” I can’t make a Gospel basket to save my life, I can’t redeem myself, sanctify myself, reconcile myself, justify myself, save myself, or anything else. It is precisely my helplessness that necessitated that Jesus be me for me! He has grabbed the human race’s errant shot and slam dunked it.  Hallelujah! Thank you Jesus that I never miss!

                                                                                                                        ~Bill Winn