Neal Pollard
It sounds like the beginning of a corny joke. “A Texas fan and an Oklahoma fan in Applebee’s got into a fight about which football team was better. The Sooner jumped the Longhorn in the lobby, pulled a knife and stabbed himself.” Seriously, the fight went worse for the Oklahoma fan, who was charged with assault and was in critical condition. They say the Texas fan was “stable,” but that might be debatable. Given the late hour of the brouhaha, it has been speculated that alcohol might have been involved. Hmm.
This San Antonio skirmish is an extreme and, thankfully, rare example of how people can expend inordinate emotion about things that ultimate amount to absolutely nothing! Our response to the subject of their heated, sustained battle is, “Who cares?” Appended to the first question is this follow up, “Why so worked up about something so eminently minor?” I have heard of members of the church who rooted for rivals that allowed their athletics allegiance to cause a rift between them, refusing to fellowship or even speak with their antagonists. Unbelievable!
While this produces an opportune time to remind us to never let anything, sports, politics, or the like, to become a higher priority than our unity in Christ, reflect for a moment on a common, if less dramatic, occurrence. Do we ever allow minor things, things that are not matters of eternal consequence, to escalate and grow into rifts and even skirmishes? Sometimes, such rifts are caused by assumptions, presumptions, innuendos and intimations. Before you know it, these create camps and schisms. Look how it started at Corinth. Paul wrote, “Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, ‘I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ” (1 Cor. 1:12). Paul references “fruitless discussions” in 1 Timothy 1:6 and “worldly and empty chatter” in 1 Timothy 6:20. How wise we are to keep the main things the main things and relegate these other things to the discard pile!
The Preacher Pollard Blog 
That’s helpful, Neal. I especially like your comment, “…Never let anything, sports, politics, or the like, to become a higher priority than our unity in Christ…”
Thanks, brother. Appreciate your great work! Keep it up!
Thank you so much for these words. We need to read Matthew 6:33 daily.