The spring fashion collections in Paris will be showing a very stylish new hat this year. The cheesehead.
Yes, the Green Bay Packers - whose fans are known for those hats that look like a chunk of cheese - have won the Super Bowl. For now, at least, cheeseheads rule. I'm very happy for them. But I'm not doing the hat.
I love what the Packers coach said about the trophy they held high on Sunday. "We're bringing the Lombardi Trophy home to Green Bay." That trophy bears the name of Green Bay's legendary coach, Vince Lombardi. While every team that wins a Super Bowl gets the Lombardi Trophy, only one team is Lombardi's team. Decades ago, he led the Green Bay Packers to one championship season after another - including the first two Super Bowls ever.
I couldn't help but think of a story I read that reveals Vince Lombardi's real trophies. It happened when Coach Lombardi was dying of cancer in a New York hospital. Willie Davis, his veteran All-Pro defensive end, had flown all the way across the country from California to see his coach. As Willie arrived at the hospital, the reporters who were keeping journalistic vigil mobbed him for a quote. He didn't say a word.
A few minutes later, as Davis emerged grim-faced, the reporters again swarmed him. "Willie, why'd you fly across the country just to spend a few minutes with Coach Lombardi?" His answer was short - and stunning. He pointed up to Vince Lombardi's window and simply said, "Because that man made me feel important." And then he was in his taxi and gone.
After all is said and done, the legacy of our life won't be the titles, the "championships," the bank account, the stuff we accumulated. It will be the lives we touched. The people who will say, "That man, that woman, made me feel important."
I make people feel one way or another when they're with me. We all do. Do they feel important - or am I busy helping them realize how important I am? Do I listen intently, without distraction - as if what they have to say is important? How many times today have I consciously tried to elevate and encourage someone - with a compliment, an email, a call, a card, praying with them, taking time to hear their heart? When have I stopped running long enough to ask a question about someone they care about or a burden they're bearing?
Or is my list more important than my brother?
We each have tremendous power to make a person feel very big or very small. Beginning with your spouse, your kids, your parents. Then the people you work with, the checkout girl, the waitress, that person on the edge of the crowd. Somewhere in your world today, there's someone who's feeling unnoticed, unappreciated - maybe unloved. Don't leave them that way.
My Jesus went out of his way for people like that. He walked past all the bigshots who would have made Him look important and made a beeline for the reviled leper, the annoying beggar, the repulsive sinner. No one felt small around Jesus. And "whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did" (1 John 2:6). When I walk away, the person I was just with will be thinking, "That man made me feel..." Fill in the blank.