I wasn’t a player on our team. I was a superfan who dabbled in commentating high school basketball games during my senior year. Our coach was new to our school, but no stranger to Kentucky high school basketball. To this day, Dave Fraley is one of the winningest coaches in Kentucky high school basketball history. He won the state championship in the 1980s, and one of his star players played and coached at the University of Kentucky.
Jordan Conley
As the horn sounded for halftime, everyone wondered, “What would this lauded coach say to the team in the halftime locker room?” Would he peel the paint off the walls with colorful language? Even worse, would he throw our team out of the gym? Who knew?
I cautiously followed the team to the locker room. After what seemed like forever, Coach walked through the door. Nobody dared to look at him. With his hands in his pockets, a broad smile came over his face. He cleared his throat and said, “Now guys, there’s not a bit of sense in looking like you just lost your best friend. As good as you all shoot the ball, you’ll get going in the second half, and if you don’t, well, we’ll lose! It’s just summer ball!”
What? Just summer ball? We were stunned.
Our team took the floor in the second half and couldn’t miss a shot. As Dick Vitale would say, “It was awesome, baby, with a Capital A!” By the time the game was over, we had won by double digits.
After the game, I asked Coach how he knew we would win. He grinned like a possum and said, “Jordan, sometimes you’ve just got to believe in your team. Sometimes, you’ve just got to have faith and turn loose.”
Faith monograms are on the shelves of small-town antique stores everywhere. They typically appear on some distressed hardwood plank with cursive font and warm, fuzzy adjectives. One adorned a barn door with the acronym, FAITH: Forwarding ALL Issues to Heaven. Yikes.
“Faith that’s pretty enough to hang on a wall or safe enough to use when it’s convenient doesn’t count for much when you’re down double digits with time running out.”
Faith that’s pretty enough to hang on a wall or safe enough to use when it’s convenient doesn’t count for much when you’re down double digits with time running out. Coach’s faith worked differently. Even though what the scoreboard said was true, faith compelled Coach Fraley to believe a different outcome was possible, even probable. Then something strange happened. After he believed, so did the team. Then, it was called faith.
March Madness has begun, and not just on the basketball court. A government shutdown seems days away, and a humanitarian crisis in the Middle East is already well under way. Americans of every political persuasion increasingly believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. Even an average commentator might observe that we’re down by double digits, and we may get blown out of the gym. But, as Easter nears, I’m remembering what Coach taught us about how faith can change outcomes.
Things couldn’t have looked much worse than when the women who went to Jesus’ tomb discovered the stone had been rolled away. His body was gone — taken, they supposed, by someone trying to humiliate him further, even in death. As their tears glistened in the moonlit sky before dawn, they begged the gardener to tell them where the corpse had been moved.
Then, something strange happened. The would-be gardener spoke with the Galilean drawl of Jesus and said, “Mary.” She believed, then told the others what happened. Then, it was called faith.
“When faith finds us, something strange happens.”
The Spirit of God continues to upend the madness of this world with an unlikely word of hope. The score may look bad, but it will change. Faith is found in the times when we’ve given up on hope. After all, faith isn’t predictable, safe or well-planned. It surprises us when we’re lost in the darkness just before the dawn of a new day. When faith finds us, something strange happens. Despite the madness, we believe, and when one of us believes, that belief tends to spread. Then, it is called faith.
How quickly we forget that having faith means turning loose.
After an incredible season, in our regional championship game that March, we were down again, by eight points with 2 minutes left. I thought the game was over. We were too far behind. But something happened. Trifectas were flying, and one of my friends, Stuart Stamper, drained two free throws with two seconds left to give us a one-point lead. The game ended, and we won.
The next day, I admitted to Coach that I thought we were goners when we were behind with 2 minutes left. He smiled and said, “Jordan, did you forget what I told you? Sometimes, you’ve just got to have faith and turn loose.”
Jordan Conley serves as co-pastor of Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. A native of Eastern Kentucky, he is a graduate of Baptist Seminary of Kentucky.