It’s been a few years since I was involved with Netball. I played for many years when I was school age and then have played, coached and umpired more recently.

A little while back I was thinking I might do some umpiring again next year. Or more to the point, I thought God was asking me to do that again next year. If so, then I’ll need to start exercising once the new year period kicks in.

I am so unfit right now.

I was also thinking that I would need to swat up on the rules again.

This also got me thinking about how we learn lots of things from sports: teamwork, resilience, communication and strategy. Yet I was reflecting how there’s one thing sport doesn’t teach us about and that’s… real life.

How often in real life do people get pulled up when they break the rules?

How often do people ‘lose the ball’ when they rebel against what is good and expected?

Not often in my experience.

The sad fact of real life is that there are not many umpires to be found. It’s Rafferty’s rules in reality.

Rafferty’s rules is an Australian colloquialism that my mum used to say a lot. It’s her vintage and not so much in common vernacular these days.

It’s when people frequently just do what they want, when they want, no matter what consequence it will have on others.

And frequently they get away with it.

That’s not what happens in sports. Depending on the sport they’ll get warnings, carded, and put in the sin bin or something like that.

And we’re quite OK with that.

Often people say that they don’t like rules, but wait until they get on the sport field and the other team gets away with an offense or two and my word we like rules again, don’t we?

How much more so in real life? How much more so when we trust the person?

A person in authority, or close to us. Or a person holding office in a church. We think we can trust them, but sadly, history – and recent history – tells us this is not so.

It’s always been this way with God’s people, unfortunately.

Just as the Israelites were entering the promised land, Joshua, their leader, ran into trouble on the battlefield. He wondered why the entry into the promised land was not so smooth and – in the words of Max Lucado – “had a meltdown”.

The trouble? People had broken the rules. God reveals it to Joshua:

Israel has sinned and broken my covenant! They have stolen some of the things that I commanded must be set apart for me. And they have not only stolen them but have lied about it and hidden the things among their own belongings.  That is why the Israelites are running from their enemies in defeat. 

God takes rule breaking very seriously.

He also takes his people seriously. So seriously that I think I’ll explore that idea tomorrow. For the time being, let’s stick with the rule breakers.

Who are the rule breakers? When it comes to God, all of us.

And despite what many people think Christianity is about, it’s not actually about following the rules. It’s about following the one who is the only person who has ever been able to follow the rules.

I’ll give you one clue: He was born in Bethlehem.

Why not celebrate him this Christmas time and say sorry for the rules you have broken. He’s done everything needing to be done to mend that.

Yours looking for her rule book,

Alison