Facing the Giants

Don’t you just love it when the underdog becomes the top dog? I do. It gives me hope. Because honestly, many days I feel more like the underdog.

Last year, the New York Giants didn’t have a good year. As a matter of fact, their head coach, Tom Coughlin, was nearly fired! He was having some problems with his players, and things just weren’t going well.

This season didn’t start out much better. The Giants lost their first two games of the season, and everyone wrote them off as losers. Has-beens. Wanna-bes.

But they hung in there. They persevered. They kept their helmets down, and plowed through, and won their next six games. They barely made the playoffs! Still, there were nay-sayers.

“The Giants are just lucky.”

“They haven’t got a chance.”

In order to continue on, they had to beat the Buccaneers . . . in Tampa Bay.

“They’ll never pull it off.”

Then, they had to beat the Cowboys . . . in Dallas.

“No way. They are goners.”

Then, in the third coldest game in NFL history, they needed to beat the Packers . . . at Green Bay.

They did it! Despite the odds, despite the doubters, they rose up and won each and every game leading up to the Super Bowl!

But wait a minute. The other team to make it to the Super Bowl was the New England Patriots. The Patriots hadn’t lost a single game. They were 18 – 0.

Going into this game, the Giants were the 12 point underdogs. So, I guess you could say the Giants had to face the giants.

New York trailed most of the game, and no one expected anything else. They simply weren’t as good of a team as the Patriots . . . or were they?

Then, with thirty five seconds left in the game, the Giants threw a beautiful pass to score the winning touchdown! But then, they had to keep Tom Brady, the NFL’s best quarterback, from completing a pass of his own.

Lo and behold, against all odds, they did it. The Giants won! The Giants actually faced off against their own giants, the Patriots, and they won the NFL Super Bowl title!

I am so proud of that team. And I’m not really a Giants fan. Hey, aside from the Bulldawgs, I’m not even a football fan! But I have been in their shoes before. We all have, at one time or another. You know what I’m talking about - feeling like failures, feeling like everyone is against us, feeling like we will surely live up to all the negative things people say about us. But the New York Giants are living proof that with hard work, perseverance, and a little faith, we can come out on top – in spite of the odds.

I guess it all comes down to the choices we make, day after day after day. We can choose to believe the worst about ourselves. We can set our goals low, and avoid disappointment. Or, we can set our goals high, and believe only the best. We can choose to sit around and think about what could have been. Or, we can put our helmets down and keep plowing through, despite what anybody else says.

The Giants knew they could win. They knew that for them, the Super Bowl was a possibility. They ignored the people who doubted them, and they pressed on. And on. And on. And now, the only giants left standing are . . . the Giants.

Makes me feel a little bit taller, just thinking about it.

Philippians 3:14 “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward . . .”