Friday Night Lights (Of The World)

I don't know why but last evening it hit me how much I miss my favorite TV show, Friday Night Lights. Sometimes we get so caught up in fiction that we forget the real life characters in the orbits of our lives. This is from August 12, 2009. 

We were on our way back from Midland, Texas and the TCSA Conference on Saturday when we stopped for supper in Austin. Our administration lined up an all-you-can-eat buffet at Furr's Cafeteria.... and it was very good. Sometimes, the eating groups tend to break down by genders when we are together as a faculty and our table was all male and mostly coaches. At my end of the table, somehow the topic of Derek Jeter and Minka Kelly's romantic status was placed on the agenda. Most of you recognize Jeter as the shortstop for the New York Yankees. Less recognizable is Kelly who plays Lyla Garrity on NBC's Friday Night Lights, a very loose interpretation of the movie with the same name. As we debated the Jeter-Kelly affair, our talk turned to our favorite episodes and our favorite characters. Ben, Kevin, Russell, and I held an impromptu round table discussion on life in the most famous fictional high school in the Lone Star State. The new season will hopefully reveal the answers to the burning questions surrounding the Dillon Panthers.Will Tim Riggins go to college or stay and help brother Billy in their new business venture? Will Coach Eric Taylor find redemption at Dillon East after being fired from Dillon High? Can Matt Saracen enroll in art school in Chicago and leave his Alzheimer's stricken grandma to the care of others? Will Buddy Garrity's life keep imploding? Are University of Texas bound bad girl Tyra Collette and nerdy Landry Clark still an item?Who will run the ice cream joint with Smash Williams and Saracen out of the picture? Will Coach Taylor's wife, the principal at Dillon High, stay after her husband was unjustly terminated? Will quarterback prodigy J.D. McCoy have another physical altercation with his overbearing dad, resulting in another visit from CPS? You could tell we are understandably excited about the new season. Unfortunately, for those of us without cable, we will have to wait until January when FNL switches from DirecTV back to NBC. It will be an agonizing wait for me.

Friday Night Lights is still a relatively new show with only fifty episodes to its credit. Its fan base obviously extends to the Westbury Christian coaching staff....and there's nothing wrong with that. What I find ironic in my own life is how easy it is to engage in animated conversation about a television show and yet I never seem to have that same excited dialogue about the Lord. I am not sure why it is easier to find common ground in entertainment than in our walk with God. Even with other believers, we may struggle in knowing the depth of convictions or takes on the Christian life. I do know that I should be more concerned with the well-being of Ben Johnson, Kevin Bishop, and Russell Carr than I am about the Taylors, the Riggins, Smash Williams, etc. Fictional actors don't really exist and have no souls. The real life inhabitants of a Texas high school do and I don't have to wait until January for the next installment to get a pulse on where they are headed. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus admonished his followers to be lights of the world. Most high school football games are played in the darkness. Without the artificial lighting from which the show derives its name, the players would blindly collide with no sense of direction. Do you know how you find the football field in small towns on autumn weekends? You look for the lights. How do you think the world spots believers? That's one lesson that needs incorporating into my lesson plans on life.

Applicable quote of the day:
"The reason women don't play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public."
Phyllis Diller

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
http://www.hawleybooks.com/
E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com