Flyover?
Kansas City. Cowtown? Coastal flyover zone? C’mon. We are the champions.
As a focused Kingdom-minded guy, I am not that partial to geography or football. While celebrating our friend Tracey Bickle’s 60th birthday a couple months back, I ran into her brother Mike (founder/director of International House of Prayer, aka IHOP) to whom I nodded when he asked if I still could care less about the game.
What a difference a Superbowl makes. Something overtook me. Maybe it was my rabid fan base of a family—each member donning any bit of red fabric they owned. My pastor son Nick even wrote this prayer, tweeted all over town: ‘O God of Conquest, You train our hands for war, our fingers for battle; we pray You so guide Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes and our fledgling run defense, that the 49ers might be destroyed and Chiefs fan everywhere may drink deep of the sweet marrow of victory; through the only Name under heaven by which we are saved, win or lose, now and forever.’ Amen.
Maybe it was the team itself: yeah, great players but kind of humble, a super team-centric band of brothers; thoroughbred Mahomes looking a bit coltish, like his status has not quite caught up to him, coach Andy Reid more like a clerk at Quik Trip than a coastal supermodel.
Maybe it was the day of the game itself. 63 degrees, my running buddy Marco and I ran alongside Blue River for miles experiencing Kansas City at its best: trees glimmering silver and bare in the sun; kind, expectant-of-good-things families and couples and singles blessing passers-by. Peaceful. Traffic-free. Primed for war.
The game itself was a glimpse of what we all should do when the enemy takes ground: not give up, rally harder, slap down passes, vie for miracles of grace that God grants guys like Mahomes. For His good pleasure. And ours. I lay prostrate before the TV blathering in tongues as we overtook ‘em.
I love this city. Decent. Pretty godly. Humble but unafraid to smash the opposition. We could not do what we do without the Bickles and IHOP. I would not have become a Catholic anywhere else. Nowhere else do I see this kind of a diverse faith base intent on victory under fire. Flyover KC? No way. I’ve landed.
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