Good morning, I'm
the Rev Steve Page from St Patrick's Anglican Church, and you're
listening to the Daily Devotional moment, sponsored by the Hudson Bay
Ministerial.
This month, I'm
drawing our images of Christian faith and spirituality from the
wonderful and sometimes weird world of Sports. Today, let's go back
to the 1970s and Darryl Sittler and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Sittler had a
Hall-of-Fame career with the Leafs. In the 1975-76 season, he was
named their Captain, and he responded with 41 goals and 59 assists,
becoming the 1st Leaf to reach the 100-point mark in one
season. Two years later, he topped that total with 117 points on 45
goals and 72 assists, a total that trailed only Guy Lafleur and Bryan
Trottier in the league.
But Sittler did
not have a great relationship with his bosses, especially team owner
Harold Ballard. Later in his career, their relationship would get so
bad that he removed the captain's C from his jersey, walked out on
the team due to depression, and demanded a trade.
Even in his
breakthrough 100-point season, he was sharply criticized by Ballard
for his slow start. And while he would finish with more than 40
goals, he had only 5 through the first quarter of the season. For a
skilled scorer like Sittler, it seemed like he was asleep for the
first couple months.
But he was
certainly awake on the night of Feb 7, a home game against the Boston
Bruins.
In that game,
Sittler set the record for most points in a single game. It started
well enough for Sittler, who picked up two assists in the opening
period. Then in the middle period, Sittler scored a hat trick, and
added two more assists. His 7 points left him just one shy of the
record, with 20 more minutes of hockey still to play.
He netted another
3 goals in the 3rd period, finishing with 6 goals and 4
assists for a record-breaking 10 points in one game. It's a total
that still stands today; no one else has had more than 8 points in
one NHL game. Not Gretzky; he reached 8 twice but no more; not
Lemieux, who was the most recent player to reach 8 points, back in
1989. Darryl Sittler's record from 1976 still stands today.
Sometimes Sittler
got a lucky bounce, such as when one pass he made out from behind the
net bounced off one skate, changed direction, hit another skate, and
trickled past poor Bruins goalie Dave Reece and into the net.
But other times
Sittler had to be awake and alert to an opportunity to score, like
when he blasted one past a snoozing goalie from just inside the blue
line.
You
know, the Bible uses the contrast between being asleep and awake to
spur us on to greater faith and greater action in our Christian
living.
Saint
Paul, in Ephesians 5:14, urges his hearers by quoting a saying they
would have been familiar with: “Wake up, sleeper, / rise from the
dead, / and Christ will shine on you.” Or in his letter to the
Romans (13:11) he writes, “The hour has already come for you to
wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than
when we first believed.” It's part of a longer challenge to live in
ways that please God, rather than living for ourselves.
And, most famously, on the
night that he was betrayed and turned over to the authorities, Jesus
was in a garden praying. According to Matthew 26, at a time when he
really needed the support and prayers of his followers and friends,
they could not stay awake: “Jesus returned to his disciples
and found them sleeping. 'Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for
one hour?' he asked Peter. 'Watch and pray so that you will not fall
into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.'”
“The Spirit is
willing but the flesh is weak.” That sums up a lot of the times
that we do things we shouldn't, or fail to do things we should.
Darryl Sittler was not literally sleeping through the first quarter
of the 75-76 season, and you are likely not literally sleeping your
way through life. But you may need to wake up, O sleeper, and devote
more time, energy and prayer to living as God calls us to.
For St Patrick's
Church, I'm Steve Page.
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