While sports can be fun and exciting to both watch and participate in, there is always the risk that a big fight could break out between the teams. It happens all the time in professional sports, when adrenaline is pumping and people aren’t always thinking clearly.
Two high school football teams almost got into a serious brawl on Friday night when the game at Zion Christian Academy in Tennessee took a nasty turn, The Columbia Daily Herald reported.
At the end of the third quarter, a referee flagged a Pickett County player for “unsportsmanlike conduct,” and told the players to sit down for a minute to calm down — which turned out to have the opposite effect.
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Soon, all the players on the Pickett County side were arguing and fighting. The mother and father of a Pickett player came down on the field and started making things worse by yelling at everyone. The parents claimed that they saw a coach hit their child with a football helmet — though that can’t be verified.
Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper Harvey Briggs, who was there watching the game, had to escort the parents off the field. After he left, something incredible happened.
“While our guys got themselves in huddle on our side and started to pray. There were a couple of Pickett County guys who were on the field. They ran over to our huddle and knelt down with our guys,” explained Paul Brenner, the interim director of schools.
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“Pretty soon, all of the players — every player on the field — was kneeling and praying. I don’t know if officer Briggs sent them to our side or not. But it was the most amazing thing,” he explained.
Perhaps the best thing about this is that Briggs didn’t send the students over. These students made the decision on their own to join the ever growing group of athletes who were kneeling down to pray.
That prayer stopped the fighting from getting any worse. The game continued on afterwards, with Pickett County eventually winning the game.
“No one will remember who won or lost. They’re going to remember what happened right in front of them on our sidelines, when our boys and their boys knelt to pray together,” Brenner explained.
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If this doesn’t show you the power of prayer, I don’t know what will. Just by taking a minute to kneel down and pray, these students avoided what could have been a very ugly and very dangerous situation.
If only more people would realize the power of Jesus and take a minute or two to pray, then a lot of conflicts and problems in this world could be avoided.
Hopefully this incident will act as an inspiration to all that acknowledging someone who’s greater than all of us can make the biggest difference.
H/T Patheos
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