Oh, my God. What an amazing day Sunday. At least to be an NFL fan. And at least to be me.
So in the NFC Championship Sunday, my favorite NFC team, the San Francisco 49ers, won and punched their ticket to Super Bowl 47. Then, the rematch. The main event. The Baltimore Ravens at the New England Patriots. And this time, no last minute dropped pass. No last second missed field goal. The Ravens stormed out for the second half, and turned a 13-7 halftime deficit into a 28-13 victory. And so the Ravens are going to their first Super Bowl in 12 years.
It is amazing to watch the Ravens' season unfold. They seem to have caught the right mix of all the ingredients a championship team needs: skill, ability, determination, unity, and fortune. And they have not taken an easy road to football's greatest game. They lost 4 out of their last 5 games (and was a 4th and 29 conversion away from 5 out of 6) going into the playoffs. Then, beating the Colts at home, they went on the road and beat two incredible teams on both sides of the ball in the Denver Broncos and Patriots.
I love sports but I'm not really going into the Xs and Os, the personalities, etc. What stuns me today, and what the point of this post is, is that the five elements listed above can take any team, any organization, any individual, to heights than they have never known before, and to places that can not be realized should any one of these elements be absent.
Therefore the Ravens' success serves as a parable for us all; to focus all of our talents and use them in order to be of the greatest possible service to our families, our community, and, also importantly, to ourselves.
Yes, I am proud of my team and I am so looking forward to watching history unfold in New Orleans in thirteen days. But I also have the humility to learn from this and to apply what I have learned to my life.
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