August will mark the beginning of another football season for me----and it is always hot. The kids return to wind-sprints, uncomfortable uniforms and sweaty bodies. Be assured, we give the players lots of water breaks to replace the lost fluids. Recently, during a strength and conditioning class, something struck me as meaningful. Toward the end of the session the team was given another water break. The guys raced for the large containers for a drink. By this time of day there was little water left and it just trickled out of the hoses and was quickly gone. The guys shook the containers, lifted and tilted them to somehow get at the last precious drops. I could feel the disappointment on their faces. Those large orange containers, that had earlier been a source of satisfaction, were now just an empty frustration. ````````` I remembered backpacking in Sequoia National Park along the High Sierra Trail with groups of high school kids from Mt. Hermon. We would have at least three treks each summer. The June treks would find these wonderful cascading fountains of water tumbling down the mountain and crossing the trail. The feeling of that cold water on my face and running down my dry throat is still very clear. But, as it got later into August, there would be disappointments for me. I would hike, dry and dusty and parched, expecting a bubbling rush of water around the next bend in the trail.

Sadly, I would often find that the source of the water had dried up and I had to continue to hike and look and hope that maybe the next turn of the trail would produce the cool water. I’m sure each of us---players and students, too---have experienced or are experiencing disappointment when we expected to find satisfaction at the “same place where it was before” and finding that the ”water” had all dried up. So, we search for our happiness or fulfillment or pleasure “just around the next bend”. I thought that sports or being a class officer or going to Stanford or being a coach would satisfy me like that cold drink of refreshing water. When a young teen I even thought that attending church or going to summer camp at Mt. Hermon would supply what I wanted down deep in my very being. Then, through my youth minister at church, I found what I really was looking for…..I could have the source of “the water” inside me and with me all the time. He told me what Jesus said in John 7:37-38: “If anyone thirsts (and we all do), let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” Wow, I could have that orange container or the mountain brook with me all the time. The really amazing thing I’ve found over the years is that it isn’t the thing or event or person that satisfies, but it is Jesus living in me. As I’ve presented my body as a living sacrifice to Him (as Romans 12:1-2 says we should), Jesus has become my very best friend who has guided me to the “life-giving waters” for my life. He even stoops down and draws the purest and most refreshing drinks to show me that He alone is the source of all that is truly satisfying to me. Psalms 36:5-10 expresses it so well: “Your steadfast love, O Lord, is as great as all the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds! Your justice is as solid as God’s mountains. Your decisions are as full of wisdom as the oceans are with water. How precious is Your constant love, O God! All humanity takes refuge in the shadow of Your wings! You feed them with blessings from Your own table and let them drink from Your rivers of delight. For You are the Fountain of Life; our light is from Your light. Pour out Your unfailing love on those who know you! Never stop giving Your salvation to those who long to do Your will.” We can have this refreshing source of Life’s Fountain inside us. We are not the source of this “water”, but we can bring our students and athletes who are really searching for satisfaction to the Fountain of Life, offer them a drink, and pray that they will experience our refreshing joy, too. Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”

Coach Hitch