Doing Pushups Ahead of Time

I'm going to wear you out today, make you feel tired, with an old football story from the archives. Instant Replay was written as a diary by Green Bay Packer Jerry Kramer to chronicle the 1967 season. And of course, back in those glory days, there was a certain short, red-faced, screaming Italian coach in charge named Mr. Vincent Lombardi.

The book really starts with the pre-season practice session, which runs eight weeks. The Packers held their camps at St. Norbert College in West De Pere, Wisconsin, ten minutes away from Green Bay. Two players to a tiny dorm room — these big, hulking 270-pounders sleeping on short little beds built for college freshman English majors.

But then there were the practice sessions themselves. And by the admission of everyone in the league, nobody practiced like the Packers. The team went through "two-a-days," double workout sessions to get in shape. As Kramer describes it, "the agony was beyond belief." There was a drill called "up-downs," where the whole team would be running in place, lifting their knees as high in the air as they could for 20, 30, sometimes 40 seconds. Then the coach would shout: "Down!" And the whole team would flop down on the grass, their stomachs smacking the ground. "Up!" And they'd run in place. "Down!" "Up!" And sometimes they'd do that 60 or 70 times until everyone on the team was gasping in exhaustion. Of course, this is mid-July in Wisconsin, if you can imagine the heat and humidity. And this just went on and on and on. Kramer tells how a big kid named Leon Crenshaw, a rookie, showed up at camp weighing 315 pounds. One day in the cafeteria, after doing about 80 of those "up- downs," Crenshaw just flat-out fainted. Passed out cold on the floor. He'd lost 25 pounds in two weeks.

Another kid came to Kramer, his tongue hanging out down to his toes. "How do you do it?" he asked. "I can't hack it." "You've got to block out the pain," the veteran told him. "Just don't think about it. Don't stop for anything." "Yeah," the rookie said, "but man, I see visions out there." "What do you mean?" And the kid repeated: "Visions, man. I see people walking around in the air." He was literally hallucinating. And Kramer adds a little P.S. "He got cut from the team a few days later."

Here's a bit more pain, though. Jerry Kramer, being a right guard, was a huge guy, weighing in at around 260. But he usually liked to play more at about 245, so it was a season- long struggle to get down to that weight. (That's a thought, isn't it — getting down to 245?) So he'd sit in the cafeteria with the other players — some of the tight ends eating huge steaks with gravy and butter and rolls and ice cream. And Kramer would eat the tiniest little piece of meat, and a small dish of peas and one glass of iced tea, and eat it all as slowly as he could, to make it seem like more food.

Well, here's the point. All of this exercise — the "up-downs," the grass sprints, the dieting — was for one purpose. Playing a better game. That added tenth-of-a-second of speed off the line when the center snapped the ball. That little advantage of power, of raw linebacker strength for when he had to face his old archrival, Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions, or Jethro Pugh of the hated Dallas Cowboys. But who could know if all that training and dieting would ever pay off big? Green Bay might win or lose every game by three touchdowns. Would it ever happen that all the agony, the preparing, the sweating and the crying and the pushing and enduring Lombardi's screaming fits would ever culminate in one big play that made all the difference?

Well, some of you football fans will know the answer. To this day they call it the Ice Bowl, where on December 31, they had to face the Cowboys for the NFC championship. Thirteen degrees below zero there in Green Bay. And the game came down to the very last minute, with the Packers behind, 17-14, driving for a TD. They got down to the enemy one- yard line, botched two plays, and had one last shot. No time-outs left. They could have tried for a field goal to tie, but decided to go for the win right there. A quarterback sneak, a 31- wedge, with Bart Starr carrying the ball. And it was going to be Jerry Kramer who had to open up the hole. He simply had to get Jethro Pugh out of the way. And Kramer writes how he poured everything he had into that one block. All the up-downs, the exercising, the relentless grinding of practice, practice, practice . . . and all the dieting to keep in perfect shape . . . all the endless drills of blocking, pushing, moving your man out . . . it all went into that last block. He blocked Pugh outside and Bart Starr churned into the opening and fell across the finish line. The Green Bay Packers were the champs again, and on TV sets all around the world, on instant replay — that's the title of his book — people saw that block by #64, Jerry Kramer, over and over and over again.

Well, there's football, which is a game . . . and then there's this thing called Christianity and the challenge of living in these last days. And Jesus tells a story which seems to hint at "up-downs" and glasses of iced tea. Because here in Matthew 25 there are five wise virgins who are prepared for the big game, and there are five foolish girls who aren't. Five have trained and five haven't. Here's verse six and following:

"At midnight the cry rang out: 'Here's the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!' Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.' 'No,' they replied, 'there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.' But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut."

Notice how the five girls ask the others for help. "Give us some of your oil." And it's not that the wise ones are selfish; it's just an impossible thing they're being asked to do. They barely have enough for themselves.

Let me ask you this: can one person prepare spiritually for another? Can someone else stock your oil? Or do all your pushups in training for the Super Bowl? That's not possible, is it? Every Christian has to have their own walk with Jesus. Every believer has to nurture his or her own relationship with God. We noticed in the Seventh-day Adventist Bible commentary for this story a good line:

"Character is not transferable. One Christian cannot do for another that which he must do for himself in preparation for the crisis that lies ahead."

And consider this too. There's a time to get ready and do your exercises and stock up your oil. And that time is before the crisis, before the midnight hour. A good Green Bay Packer couldn't come up to December 31, five or six hours before the kickoff of that championship game with Dallas, and think to himself: "Oh my, I'd better do a few pushups here, and jog a lap or two." It's far, far too late by then. In this story, there was a time to get oil, and that time had past. It's suggested that maybe the five foolish virgins could go buy oil. But at midnight? How many stores were open then? The last I checked, there weren't any 24- hour convenience marts or 7-Elevens in existence in the time of Christ. The end of the story does have these five girls showing up late at the banquet hall, and it doesn't specify if they managed to scrounge some oil somewhere. But when midnight comes, when it's time for the Super Bowl, the hour for preparing has long past. It's now time for the results of preparation to manifest themselves.

Do you remember the line by Thomas Fuller?

"In fair weather prepare for foul."

Or the ancient philosopher Syrus:

"We should lay up in peace what we shall need in war."

What does this mean for us? Listen, friend, training camp is happening now for you and for me. We need to get that oil, the Holy Spirit, flowing right now, Thursday, July 13, 2000. We need to know Christ today, have a living relationship with Him at this very moment.

David has a missionary friend, Dr. Ralph Neall, who served for years in Saigon, right during the Vietnam War. So he knows a few things about preparing for crisis ahead of time. In his recent book, entitled How Long, O Lord?, he comments:

"The reward for the wise is a place at the wedding banquet of the Lamb. The loss of the foolish is to be shut out with the tragic words, 'I don't know you.' If we want Him to know us then, we must know Him now!" And then he adds: "The parable of the virgins tells us we should cultivate our devotional lives and keep our vessels full of oil every day. We never know when we may find ourselves thrown into a situation in which we won't have time to study and pray before making a decision or giving an answer."

You know, our electronic pocket calendars don't tell us exactly when the Big Game is. "No man knows the day or the hour"; that's the punch line of this story. But we know who the Coach is, and when practice is too. Friend, it's right now. Grab your shoulder pads and let's get out there.

Go back to the top