The Best NCAA Tournament Pick; And A Biblical Solution to Beat Regret

Sports and Scripture Podcast — Vol. No. 2

Here is the Podcast version. (Text version is below). Vol. 1 of the Sports and Scripture Podcast can be found here.

SPORTS

If you’re filling out your NCAA Tournament bracket, don’t waste one with a seed lower than No. 8 winning the tournament.

In fact, you probably shouldn’t pick a seed lower than No. 3 to win. In the 39 years since the tournament expanded to 64 teams, there have been 34 champions from among the top three seeds — with 25 of those being No. 1 seeds. Combined, seeds four through eight have won only five titles over four decades.

And definitely don’t pick a No. 5 seed to win it all. That has never happened. Unless you feel moved to think it has to happen some time, right? Could this be the year?

It’s interesting that Michigan is included among the five seeds this year. The Wolverines probably deserved at least a four seed. They’re the best bet to win from a group that also has Clemson, Oregon, and Memphis.

But it’s better to keep your champion picks among the top three seeds. Iowa State and Kentucky are fun picks on the No. 3 line. Tennessee, Alabama, and Michigan State all seem capable at No. 2. But probably don’t go with St. John’s and Rick Pitino. Don’t count on the coach. Consider the team first and foremost.

At the top, everybody looks safe for championship picks. Probably the lesser of these teams in Houston. Also, Auburn didn’t finish strong despite its great overall body of work.

So which team is the best pick? It comes down to Duke and Florida. And if you’re listening to me — I assure you that you should not be — then go with Florida. The Gators aren’t quite as talented at Duke, but I think Duke coach Jon Scheyer provides a safer route than Florida’s Todd Golden.

Wait, didn’t I say ‘Don’t count on the coach?’ I did. And I also said you should not be listening to me when filling out your NCAA brackets.

SCRIPTURE

One thing that can be difficult for older parents to understand is why their kids don’t have as much time to visit and talk.

But think back to your own life growing up, and it paints a picture. As a child, nearly every moment of your life involved your parents. They woke you up in the morning. They made sure you had meals and snacks. They watched your type of entertainment on television. Even when you had friends over, your parents supervised things.

When you got older, your life became less parent-focused and more friend-focused. Your peers understood your struggles, hopes, and dreams. Meanwhile, your parents seemed old-fashioned and uncool.

Eventually, even well-respected parents became annoying. “I just want to live my own life,” you might have said, or at least thought.

Another thing that impacted your relationship came from overworking parents. Yes, they had well-meaning intentions. They wanted to ensure their kids had better than they had — or at least as good. So they worked. They missed a game, a play, maybe a birthday. Maybe the parents hated missing those things, but duty called.

One day, you found yourself in your parents’ shoes. You had kids and understood the burdens of bills, mortgages, and trying to get ahead, or at least keep your head above water.

At the end of the day — your energy zapped — eating dinner with your fast-growing kids was nearly all you had to offer. Your parents faded into the background. It didn’t change how much you loved them because you surely did. It didn’t diminish your thankfulness for their sacrifices. And you recognized the need to find more time for them. But that dreaded enemy — time — kept getting in the way.

Before you knew it, your children reached the stage where they believed their friends understood the world better than you did. And in the blink of an eye, so it seemed, the world and its cares swallowed them as it had once compromised you.

Now you are that older parent, trying to understand what you could have done better. And this is where the evil one attacks, using a familiar tool.

Regret is an enemy that fights unfairly. It weaponizes the past and turns it into a field of poor decisions. Look what you did here. Remember that? If you had done differently in that situation, you wouldn’t feel this way today. You blew your chance at peace, joy, and happiness.

As a side note, there is another sinister trap different from regret. Some parents maintain active lifestyles, matching the busyness of their children. Then, neither party is burdened with having enough time for the other. Unfortunately, this facade will break down as age catches up with the older parents.

But there are solutions in the spiritual battle against regret. The first thing that must be realized is regret won’t surrender. You will never wake up one morning and find it gone.

However, Jesus supplied us with a weapon in our fight against regret. It can be found in one of the longest chapters in the New Testament. Luke 9:62 says,

“Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ ”

If we are looking forward, there is no place for regret. Hand to plow, look forward. We need to do this because every time we sneak into a place where regret surrounds us, we temporarily lose our way in the kingdom of God.

It’s like a young boy who left his house on a winter day, unaware of the weather forecast. He planned to deliver a specialty newspaper to houses in his neighborhood. Before he returned home, a sudden blizzard hit. It snowed so hard for a few moments, the boy couldn’t tell one direction from another. He stopped in his tracks, paralyzed by the frightful phenomenon. But the storm eased. The blizzard turned into flurries and he made his way home.

Had the boy been more prepared, he may not have chosen to venture out into the weather. And that’s how we should approach our battle against regret. We know it’s crouching, waiting to devour. We must be ready with Scripture, in season and out of season.

And the greatest weapon against regret is Romans 8:28. God knows we will live a life filled with mistakes. This was especially true of any days when we thought we had things figured out. We were young and smart. Oh, my. But that’s where — if you love God — Romans 8:28 conquers regret.

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

So God takes our mess of a life — our mistakes, bad attitudes, wrong thinking, carelessness, ill-gotten desires, greed (insert anything else that fits here) — and through his infinite wisdom and mighty power, he somehow works it for good.

When we fall into regret, we are fighting against God. If you think, “If I only had a chance to go back and fix this or that, my regret would be gone and my life better,” you are telling God he can’t make Romans 8:28 work in your life.

And here’s the hard part about this. Try to eliminate regret from your life, and you will find it is so familiar that you have trouble letting it go. What? But nobody wants regret. Right? It should be easy. Take a little “Regret Be Gone,” rub it in like a Tide To-Go Stick on a stain, and poof!

No. We don’t have the human ability. No amount of rubbing and scrubbing will remove it. We have to trust in the Lord. We have to believe what He said in Romans 8:28 is true. And every regret craftily knocks at the door, answer with a sword in your hand. The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God

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