Ashes to Ashes

So the Ashes is over for another while, and it has been quite a good series spoiled only somewhat by the fact that England (Commonwealth XI) managed to win and we now have to listen to them gloat about how they are the greatest team in the world. Don't get me wrong we would have had to listen to the Aussies gloat as well but at least they would have done it from 30,000 miles away.

One of the inescapable facts of the series was the fact that the Australian cricket team are in a very real slump, they just aren't good enough. For someone who grew up watching the Australians in their hay day with the likes of McGrath and Warne taking wickets for fun and Ponting scoring runs for fun, this is very hard to watch and believe. I just never thought that it would come to this. And so evidently neither did the Australian newspapers, who are now calling for heads to roll and a root and branch review of how to take Australian cricket forward. To me it seems like the whole of Australia has been shaken by this Ashes thumping, it was just something that no one in Australia could ever see happening, and now it has. Now the Australians who had put all their faith in their cricketing ability have been shaken everything they thought they knew about life and beating the English at cricket has been shaken. But why? Why are the Australians so shaken?

Because they have put their faith in all the wrong things, put all their trust and hope in the wrong things, they have gotten their identity from being the best at the world in cricket, and now that has been shaken and they cant cope with that. Because the only thing that offers us true identity and true hope in this world is a right relationship with Jesus Christ. When we have a right relationship with Jesus Christ it puts everything else into context, it shows us how tiny and insignificant losing a game of cricket really is, how tiny and insignificant whether our football team loses or not because it gives us our true identity, we no longer have to search for it in other places and other ways.

Are the Australian cricket team in terminal decline, is Punter finished I don't know. But if this is where you are placing your identity , where you are placing your hope, in sports teams, in music bands, in academic circles, in going out with friends then you will always be disappointed because only Jesus Christ can give us true hope, only Jesus Christ can give us our true identity and show us who we really are...