Blue Cats

Thousands of years ago, God in heaven gathered a particular group of people, the Israelites, to be His special people.  He gave them the Ten Commandments to guide their behavior.  He loved them and brought them out of slavery in Egypt and gave them the Promised Land.  All He expected in return from them was allegiance to His Commandments.

The First Commandment is: "I am the Lord, Your God, do not have strange gods before me."  Yet time and time again, the chosen people followed the practices of the pagans around them and made gods out of gold and worshiped them.  They were particularly fond of making Golden Calves.  They repeatedly tried God's patience with these "idols."

Many of us in Lexington, Kentucky, U.S.A., have our own brand of idol, a big Blue Cat, that we worship.  We spend lots of time talking about the University of Kentucky basketball team, the Wildcats.  We watch all their games on TV or go to watch in person.  For much of the year, everything Coach Cal or any team member does is a topic of conversation among all of us.  We love our 'Cats!'

You can imagine the number of people who have whole rooms in their homes FULL of anything that has a blue and white Kentucky Wildcats symbol on it.  There are a few homes in town with exteriors obviously modeled after the blue and white colors.  I'm not knocking this - indeed, the coach of the Lady Wildcats, Matthew Mitchell, spoke at my church's Women's Guild; I wore my blue U.K. Cats sweater, naturally, and I asked him to sign it with a permanent marker.

Most Lexington residents and many around Kentucky and even the U.S.A. get really, REALLY excited watching the U.K. basketball team, especially when they're winning, which they frequently do.  Several years ago, I was working at a local hospital when the Cats were playing the University of Louisville Cardinals basketball team.  This was a critical game!  My male colleague was from Michigan and he asked, "What's all the fuss about?  This is just a ball game."  I set him straight, explained to him how it was around here, "Look, this game is NOT just between two basketball teams.  It's between the Cats and me and the Cardinals and my Louisville relatives for bragging rights for the whole next year!"  I think he understood then why the game was on in all of the patients' rooms and why we snatched looks at the game when we passed their rooms or went in them.

The U.K. Cats won that game!  The whole city celebrated.  We were worried that the game was so important and the team put so much of themselves into winning it that the NCAA tournament would be less important to them and they'd lose it.  That was the year they went on to win the tournament.

It's amazing to me that when I was visiting in Hilton Head Island the past two years, in February, and wore my big U.K. sweat jacket, so many people came up to me on the beach and cheered for the Cats!

Yet, I try to keep a proper perspective on all the 'Blue Madness,' we have around central Kentucky.  I'm thinking of a 'test' to see if what a person worships is God or if it is something else.  I suggest that we count the number of religious images around our homes and the number of 'team' images.  The one with the greater number probably is what we think is most important.

And, yes, there are folks who in reality substitute an athletic team(s) or computer games or shopping addiction or even a person and devote so much time to it that they are worshiping an IDOL, a god substitute.  Let's just call it what it is!

IDOL worship is not good!  Our God in Heaven, our creator, the one who loves us more than any person could, deserves our worship and our witness.

Lord God, we want to make You Number One in our lives.  We want to return a part of that love You have for us!