“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.” (John 14:1, N.K.J.V.)

Our son Ryan played on the high school basketball team. Each summer the head coach would organize and run a travel-ball tournament as a way of raising money for his program. Teams from neighboring counties would send their summer teams to compete in the tournament, with teams from multiple age groups playing in various gyms located around our county. Like all the other parents of the players on our high school team, Tonya and I were expected to volunteer our services in some capacity to help make the tournament happen.

We signed up to run the scoreboard and keep the scorer’s book at one of the high school level games that was played at the high school gym. One of those teams had a superstar guard who was an awesome player. Unfortunately for him, though, he picked up two quick fouls early in that game and was subsequently benched. In case you don’t know much about basketball, high school players are only allowed five fouls per game, which means that committing three in the first of two halves forces a kid to play cautiously for the entirety of the closing half lest he foul out completely.

Well, the kid sat the bench for most of the first half, and everybody was assuming that he wouldn’t get back into the game until the start of the second half. But very late in the first half his coach decided to take a risk. The game was tight, and he really needed that kid’s talent on the floor. So, with the chances being relatively low that the kid would pick up his third foul in the limited time that remained, the coach put him back into the game. As the kid came to the scorer’s table to await the next stoppage of play so that he could be reinserted, I heard the coach say to him, “Don’t make me look stupid.”

You can guess what happened next. It took the kid about twenty seconds to commit his third foul. As soon as it happened, the coach sent another player to the scorer’s table to replace him. I blew the horn to signal to the refs that a player was being substituted, and the superstar guard began his long walk back to the bench. As his luck would have it that game, he had to walk right past his coach to get there. Instead of ranting and raving at the kid, the coach just glared at him with a death stare from the moment the foul occurred until the moment the kid walked past him. Needless to say, that kid had made him look stupid for putting him back into the game.

The spiritual lesson you can learn from this story is that people will let you down. Whether they do it accidently or on purpose, they will disappoint you. That’s why you should reserve your ultimate trust for Jesus Christ. Trust in Him to eternally save you. Trust in Him to meet your daily needs. Trust in Him to answer your prayers. Trust in Him to guide you. He is the one who loved you enough to die so that all your sins might be forgiven, and He is the one who, when all the dust is settled and all the accounts are finalized, will never leave you looking stupid.