When A Hero Lets You Down

Everyone has heroes right? Who is your hero? For me one of my heroes was Michael Jordan. I was really excited about the induction ceremony for the basketball hall of fame. That year’s class was one of the best ever including two of my favorite basketball players MJ and David Robinson. The hall of fame is supposed to be the crowning moment of a person’s career where they are immortalized forever as one of the greatest ever to play the game. It goes without saying that MJ is the greatest player ever to play the game of basketball. So how huge a moment when he took the stage to accept his award but what happened next was the biggest disappointment ever. He said he wasn’t going to cry and all he was going to do was just say thank you and walk off the stage. That is totally the opposite of what he did. For what seemed like an eternity we listened to one of the worst acceptance speeches ever. I won’t bore you with the details but for a speech where one is supposed to thank everyone for how they have helped them achieve this award, it was filled with some of the most insensitive and ungrateful thank you I have ever heard. Needless to say I was very disappointed in him and felt let down.

Has someone you looked up to ever let you down? How did you feel? I was pretty angry that he would do such a thing, but he is not the first person to let some people down. The bible is full of people who failed at something. When each of them failed, there were a few people who were disappointed in them. One instance that comes to mind is what happened to one of my favorite characters in the bible, David. David lived in the king’s palace. He was there because King Saul was impressed with him and brought him in to his house. Of course anyone would look up to the king, after all he is the king right? The greatest ever! So imagine later on when Saul tries to kill David. What bigger disappointments then having your hero want to kill you? It doesn’t get any better in chapter 23 when Saul is in hot pursuit of David. Saul turns over every thing he can find just to find out where David and just like those cartoons Saul goes around one side of the mountain while David was on the other side of the mountain. Later, these two have a close encounter and one of them doesn’t even know it. Saul and his troops decided to take a rest and Saul decided it was a good time for a bathroom break. Now unknown to Saul, David was hiding in the cave where he went to take care of business. David sneaks up on Saul and cuts off a piece of his robe. What was David thinking? He has an opportunity to kill the man who is trying to kill him but he chooses not to do it. Why is that? Would you have killed him? After all he was your hero and then he hurts you so bad that you have to fear for your life and run.

All of us have had great heroes fail us. For whatever reason they chose to do what they did, we have to deal with the aftermath. We can hate them for what they did, or we can realize that just like us they are humans capable of making mistakes. It doesn’t make it right at all what they do, but as one person once said, Life is 10 percent the things that happen and 90 percent how you respond to the 10 percent things that happen. It’s like when your best friend all the sudden turns on you and starts being mean to you. What do you do?

David was forced with that choice with King Saul. Not that they were best friends, but he was best friends with Saul’s son Jonathan. But for David, how do you go from looking up to the king and now the king wants you dead and somehow you get a chance to get even with him. After running cutting off Saul’s robe, David comes running out of the cave and comes up to Saul and ask why is he chasing him and listening to people who are saying that he, David is out to kill him. He tells him that if all that people were saying is true, then why did he have the chance to kill him and didn’t.

David chose to still have respect for who Saul was as a person and God reminded him that no matter what Saul has done he is still the king and for whatever reason God has, it is not his place to kill him or to get revenge for all the evil he did to him. Here is what I am trying to say. We can’t change what people do and what they say, but we can choose how we respond to them. It’s a choice. You can focus on the negative and throw away all the good times and lessons learned by becoming bitter towards the one that hurt you or you can forgive them, focus on the good memories and move on. So you ask how this can happen? We can actually take a lesson from that same award ceremony.

As I told you, David Robinson is one of my favorite players. During his speech, he reminded all of us what a true hero does. In his speech, he thanked his kids, his wife, his teammates, the fans and most of all he thanked his God by sharing the story out of the Gospel according to Luke about the 10 men who were healed of leprosy. Only one of them did the right thing after getting healed, he came back and thanked Jesus for sparing him and healing him. We can all take a lesson from him and recognize that people can fail us, heroes can let us down, but God is the true hero and deserves to be thanked for all he has done for us. I challenge you the next time a hero or a friend lets you down, don’t stay mad at them, but realize they are human, forgive them for their mistake and then focus on the things that made them a hero in the first place. When you do that you will find it easier to get past the hurts and move on with life!

Stay Forever Strong!