Friday Night Lights

“Mercy is the compassion in our hearts for another person’s misery, a compassion which drives us to do what we can to help him.”-St. Thomas Aquinas

Gainsville State School, located just north of Dallas, is the kind of place where dreams go to die. It is a maximum security juvenile correctional facility for teen-aged boys. There is so much that is not typical; cells instead of cell phones, a dress code stricter than any private school, and a new meaning for after-school detention. There is no escape….except for football.

If you have good behavior and good grades, you can try out for the team. Every game is a road game, of course (not much interest from neighboring schools to voluntarily go to prison), and there’s not much winning. But if you play for the Tornadoes, you get to go out on a Friday night, even if only for a few hours. And feel free.

Many would see this as justice. These boys broke the law, and they should pay for their crimes; it’s only fair…as concrete as the walls that surround Gainsville State School. But a special few understand that justice is completed in mercy, and mercy makes life (and people) a whole lot bigger.

When powerhouse Faith Christian football coach Kris Hogan saw that his team was scheduled to host Gainsville State, he did something remarkable; he emailed the Faith Christian faithful and asked that some of them cheer for the Tornadoes
----and not just once, at the start, to be polite. He asked them to do so for the entire game.

Think about this, you son’s football coach asks you to move to the other side of the stadium and cheer for a bunch of criminals who just happen to be playing against your boy. I know it’s a Christian school, but really?

Hogan’s message was simple: these boys will have no one cheering for them, and probably never have, except for a few of the school’s faculty members and the guards that usher them on and off the field. Largely forgotten, abandoned, given up on by society…at seventeen.

"Mercy is the compassion in our hearts for another person’s misery, a compassion which drives us to do what we can to help him.”

So, many of the parents and friends of the Faith Christian team followed Coach Hogan’s suggestion. They formed a “spirit line” for the Tornadoes to run through before the game, and then stayed on the Tornado side of the stadium, cheering throughout for the visitors. At the end, the scoreboard read Faith Christian Lions 33, Gainsville State Tornadoes 14. But you wouldn’t have guessed it by the scene at mid-field, as the Tornadoes playfully doused their coach with water, hugged each other, and prayed with the Lions.

One of the Gainsville players said he felt like he was finally home, and that there were angels on the sidelines.

Compassion in action, mercy; it is a little bit of heaven on earth. And more than that, a confirmation that humans can be noble…and life can be better than fair.

Question for reflection: How often do you practice mercy?