Extemporaneously Kate

Everything by the seat of my pants!

Inmate Football (a story of kindness)

Posted by Kate on 4:13 PM
Someone posted this on Facebook and I really loved it.  I'm not an overly religious person and when someone asked why I liked this so much I wondered why.  They said that they got the feeling I didn't like Christianity or God and I said that wasn't the case at all.  I get turned off by people doing hateful things in the name of God, not the principles them selves.  While I may be miffed @ the church from time to time, I always love an act of kindness.  So here it is.  



Inmate Football
    There was an unusual high school football game played in Grapevine,   Texas .  The game was between Grapevine         Faith Academy and the Gainesville   State School .  Faith is a Christian school and Gainesville State School  is located     within a maximum security correction facility.
   
Gainesville State School has 14 players. They play every game on the  road. Their record was 0-8. They've only scored twice. Their 14 players  are teenagers who have been convicted of crimes ranging from drugs to assault to robbery. Most had families who had disowned them.  They wore  outdated, used shoulder pads and helmets. Faith Academy was 7-2. They  had 70 players, 11 coaches, and the latest equipment.
  
Chris Hogan, the head coach at Faith Academy , knew the Gainesville team  would have no fans and it would be no contest, so he thought, “What if half of our fans and half of our cheerleaders, for one night only,  cheered for the other team?”  He sent out an email to the faithful  asking them to do just that. “Here’s the message I want you to send,”  Hogan wrote. “You’re just as valuable as any other person on the   planet.”

  Some folks were confused and thought he was nuts. One player said,  “Coach, why are we doing this?” Hogan said, “Imagine you don’t have a home life, no one to love you, no one pulling for you. Imagine that everyone pretty much had given up on you. Now, imagine what it would  feel like and mean to you for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you.”
 The idea took root. On the night of the game, imagine the surprise of  those 14 players when they took the field and there was a banner the  cheerleaders had made for them to crash through. The visitors’ stands were full. The cheerleaders were leading cheers for them. The fans were  calling them by their names. Isaiah, the quarterback-middle linebacker said, “I never in my life thought I would hear parents cheering to  tackle and hit their kid. Most of the time, when we come out, people are  afraid of us. You can see it in their eyes, but these people are yelling  for us. They knew our names.”
 Faith won the game, and after the game the teams gathered at the 50-yard  line to pray. That’s when Isaiah, the teenage convict-quarterback surprised everybody and asked if he could pray and he prayed, “Lord, I  don’t know what just happened so I don’t know how or who to say thank  you to, but I never knew there were so many people in the world who cared about us.”  On the way back to the bus, under guard, each one of  the players was handed a burger, fries, a coke, candy, a Bible, and an  encouraging letter from the players from Faith Academy .
 What an incredible act of Christian witness and kindness and goodness  that was.  Proverbs 11:17 says, “Your own soul is nourished when you are  kind.” Proverbs 3:27 says, “Do not withhold good when it is in your  power to act.”
 Be kind to someone this week. Be kind to every person you meet. You might be amazed at what God will do with a simple act of kindness.



Don't let the preachy stuff turn you off or the use of Bible verses.  Try to look beyond that and see it for what its worth.  A good story about people giving a shit about one another.

Comments (5)


Blogger focusing the lens
January 12, 2011 at 4:46 PM  

Gotta admit. I teared up a bit. That's such a sweet story.

Anonymous Anonymous
January 12, 2011 at 5:12 PM  

Single tear )': now people think I'm weird because I'm tearing up in the school library XD

Blogger Ada
January 12, 2011 at 7:21 PM  

That's really amazing ;_;

Blogger Pollariis
January 12, 2011 at 8:56 PM  

D: awww

Blogger Munich and Berlin
January 13, 2011 at 10:57 AM  

that's a really nice story~

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