Even in these economic times when many American families face very difficult times and children will go to bed hungry, today most eyes will be fixed on a sports extravaganza featuring two top American football teams. I’ve been wondering if God will be watching the Super Bowl and here are the reasons I think that the answer is “Yes, God will be watching.”

Most of us who were raised by parents who took us to church or Sunday School—or perhaps even Vacation Bible School—remember the Bible passage that says not even a sparrow falls to the earth without God's knowing of it.  If you think about it, that’s pretty incredible, and if He is watching the death of a mere sparrow, what must he know about us?

Many years ago Michael Novak, who began his career as a Catholic seminarian, wrote a little book titled The Joy of Sports in which he explores our human fascination and love for sports.  The sports “fan” is a word derived from the Latin “fanum,” which means temple or sacred space.  And we experience a taste of immortality when an older athlete competes with younger ones and wins.  Bret Favre is but the most recent of many old—relative to the competition—men who thrill us with their drive, persistence and strength of will. And, lest we forget, in an age of equality and diversity, sports is the one arena where excellence is known and universally honored.  We thrill at the excellence of great athletes like Willy Mays, Steve Prefontaine, Ralph Kiner, George Blanda and coaches like George Allen, Vince Lombardi, Knute Rockne or Red Blaik. Their achievements are transparent to the great Achiever whose Being informs our human experience of perfection, beauty, and all that is admirable and good in this world.

Now, if God knows when a sparrow falls to earth, I think we can be certain that on Sunday, February 7, He will be at the Super Bowl.  There He will see mere humans reach toward the heavens to transcend the bonds of gravity and, in doing so, give us insight into what true perfection is. God is interested in that. 

Knowing that fills me with hope that no matter how far we Americans may fall in our attempts to get out of the current economic and political mess in which we find ourselves, there is an overarching power that will cushion our fall back to earth and who knows that we tried our human best.

Let the game begin, and God bless America.