I feel as though it is safe to say that I am a football fanatic. I played in high school and college and now coach. On top of that, I am also that guy that checks every update on the NFL website and looks at Mock Drafts 10 months before they occur. For those of you that don’t know, the “Draft” is the day when NFL teams get to choose from the best college players in the nation. Having the number 1 pick is awesome because you have all kinds of options. You can trade it for a player, you can trade it for more picks, you can trade it for a star player, or you can pick the next big star out of college. This Saturday is the 2009 draft, and there is a lot of speculation of who will be taken with the number 1 overall pick by the Detroit Lions.

Being the number one is an awesome privilege. This basically sets you aside as the best player in college football the previous year. It comes with MILLIONS of dollars to play football, as well as MILLIONS more to endorse products you probably haven’t heard of before.

Every year when the draft comes around, I can’t help but think of what it would be like to be the number 1 pick. My views on this have changed over the years. When I was in High School and College, I thought there was a chance that I could one day be the number 1 pick (didn’t happen). When my playing career ended, I thought of how nice it would be to have all that money and prestige and what I could do with it. Now I look back and see how stupid I was.

When I think of the number 1 pick now, I think that it was me. I was God’s number 1 pick. God sent His only son to the Earth for me. God didn’t just take me with the first pick, He traded His only son for me! God didn’t just send his son, but we are told in 1 Peter 3:18:

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous and the unrighteous, to bring YOU to God.

It is a hard thing to grasp that any of us are worth that much. It is hard to think that God loved us so much that he traded everything for us. He gave His son’s life for us. Even though there may not be ludicrous amounts of money and prestige that comes with being God’s number 1 pick, it is worth more than playing football ever could be.

Praying for my teammates (that’s you guys)…