'The Players Were Outstanding!'

Wow! What a night at Windsor Park. Northern Ireland through to their first major football finals since 1986. AP McCoy was interviewed tonight after the match on Five Live and he was saying it was taking him in his memories back to childhood and 1982. It’s been a long time, a long long time.

Michael O’Neill put it this way in his own comments after the game ‘The players were outstanding. Right through the team, magnificent. It’s a privilege to be here.’ It’s not that Northern Ireland have a clutch of world class players, but what they do have and have had is tremendous team spirit, a real ethic that has enabled them to play together in a way that maximises who they are and what is possible.

As a Christian minister I have always enjoyed thinking of the church as a football team. A collection of people who have different strengths. People from different backgrounds. People who ‘play well’ in different roles, and yet a group of people called together, to function as a team. The Bible makes much of this idea, describing the church as a body made of many parts (1 Corinthians 12:14), a group of people called to pursue one goal (Philippians 3:14).

In Ballyhenry we are not all the same. Some play well at the front, others are more comfortable at the back, some work hard in unseen roles and so the list goes on. We’re different but together we are a team, called together by Jesus Himself. Being part of something like this really is a privilege whatever role we play in.