I have been a Kansas girl all my life. Even for the five short years I lived all of two miles across the state line on the Missouri side of Kansas City, I still told people I was from Kansas.
I attended the University of Kansas, so of course I cheer for the Jayhawks.
I currently live in one of the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City, so of course I cheer for the Chiefs.
But one of my favorite teams, one of my very favorites teams, has always been the Royals!!! I grew up listening to nearly every game the Kansas City Royals played on am radio, thanks to my brother and my dad. I was a little girl when the Kansas City Royals won the World Series in 1985 and I bet I could have told you the entire starting line-up that year! Willie Wilson was my personal favorite!
It's really no surprise then that my boy's play baseball, both of them. We attended 50+ little league games last summer alone! My ten year old's team is of course... the Royals!!!
The past few weeks have been absolutely amazing here in the KC area, well, all throughout Kansas quite honestly. We were lucky enough to have tickets to the postseason games and I got to go to two of the games with the kids. As I took in all the sights and sounds of the final game in the American League Championship, it was something I will never forget. The crowed went absolutely wild! 40,000 people were cheering, shouting and screaming, united in a single victory,a common conquest, sharing in the triumph of one team. Strangers embraced, grown men cried, the whole city rejoiced!
I screamed too, jumped up and down, hugged my kids, and high-fived some strangers. Then I took a step back and just watched. And I found myself wondering why it takes a sports team to get this kind of reaction from a crowd.
As amazing as this post season has been, and it HAS BEEN AMAZING!! It's a moment in time. Next year, it will be another team in the lime light and this will be a story we tell. Yes, Royals fans have waited a long time for this, I know, I'm one of them. But there is something else I have been waiting my whole life for. Something the whole creation has been waiting nearly 2000 years for, the coming of a King. Do you think He will get the same reaction? I don't think He will.
Last Wednesday night, the city of Kansas City went wild, we cried out, we rejoiced... for a sports team. Would the King of Kings get the same reaction?
When Jesus entered the street of Jerusalem for the last time, his disciples, the multitude that followed him and adored him cried out, they rejoiced and when the Pharisees told Jesus to make them be quiet, His reply was, "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out."
There were no stones crying out last Wednesday, not in Kansas City. Would we rejoice the same if it wasn't a sport's team but the one true King? Or would it be up to the rocks to cry out?
