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Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is yet near…(Isaiah 55:6 KJV)

If you have been attending Resurrection for any period of time, you must agree that I deserve to be commended.

Why, you ask? Because I have resisted the urge of GLOATING about the recent victory of Tom Brady, who will play in his (record) 10th Super Bowl on Sunday. The overwhelming majority of the Resurrection family are Tom Brady haters, because they have difficulty accepting that fact that he seems to win all the time. Now of course, some of these same folks have no problem with the Fakers (I mean the Lakers) winning all the time—but alas, I shalt not quibble.

I will make no predictions about who shall prevail on Sunday—only that it should be an immensely entertaining game. Those who know me know that I am a not so much a fan of Tom Brady as much I am a student of excellence (I have written about that distinction here). But my focus today is not Tom Brady, but Aaron Rodgers, whom Brady bested in the NFC Divisional Title Playoff game a few weeks ago.

I have read a batch of articles about the plight of Mr. Rodgers, and all of them make pretty much the same point. One article written immediately after the game argued that Mr. Rodgers should charge the Packers with malpractice because of the way they have mismanaged his career. Another article written months before the game pretty much predicted the outcome, and provided this tragic snapshot of Mr. Rodgers career:

As Tom Brady’s wife once said, a quarterback “can’t throw the ball and catch it.” As the chart above shows, the Packers haven’t provided enough good receivers for Rodgers to throw to. As talented as Rodgers is, he has never been surrounded by enough weapons to truly maximize his talent. One final article summarized the gist of the previous two in Rodgers own words: “It’s all about windows of opportunities.”

Athletes, particularly veterans, only have a window of opportunity, and they must manage it wisely. It’s why Tom Brady left the Patriots after 20 years to start over. He realized that his window of opportunity (to win) was closing.

Here’s the takeaway: not only do athletes have a window of opportunity—all of us do. As Shakespeare reminded us in Julius Caesar:

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

We can miss the tide. The window of opportunity can close.

When I moved to Los Angeles, a good friend who had moved to the city immediately after college warned me not to be seduced by the sunshine. He told me that one of the hidden dangers of life in Los Angeles is the tendency to lose to track of time. Since the seasons don’t change, you always think it’s summertime.

Sunshine is seductive; as is youth, success, health, and a hundred other blessings we tend to take for granted.

This is particularly true for Christians. We can become so accustomed to the message of grace that we tend to assume that we can always be forgiven, that we will always be given a second chance, and that things will always get better. However, there is an underemphasized note in the symphony of the gospel to which we should pay more careful attention. In Luke 19:44, the scriptures tell us that Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem because they missed the time of their visitation. How tragic! The Savior was near, but they missed him. Yes. We can miss a divine visitation!

Divine visitations, Windows of Opportunity. Missed chances. As John Greenleaf Whittier so eloquently said, “Of all the sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these: it might have been.”

I don’t want you to miss your window of opportunity.

And I don’t want to miss mine either.

So here are five recommendations on how to avoid doing so:

1.Play To Win (It’s not enough to be in the game)

2.Don’t Take Blessings For Granted (Life can change overnight)

3. Keep Track Of Time and Seasons (You’ve aged just reading this)

4. Always Remember You’re Only As Good As Your Team. (Can anybody on your team catch? Any first rounders?)

5. Realize It’s Never To Late To Change Teams (Think Brady and The Buccaneers)

Now go squeeze through whatever windows of opportunity that you have left before they close.