Seabiscuit
From the Series—God at the Box Office
March 9, 2004This evotional continues our God @ the Box Office series.
Laura Hillenbrand opens her bestselling book, Seabiscuit, this way. “In 1938, near the end of a decade of monumental turmoil, the year’s number-one newsmaker was not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hitler, or Mussolini. It wasn’t Pope Pius XI, nor was it Lou Gehrig, Howard Hughes, or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn’t even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit.”
Faultfinders
One of the most fundamental principles of human nature is this: we tend to see what we’re looking for. If you’re looking for something negative you can find something negative even in the most positive of circumstances. And if you’re looking for something positive you can find something positive even in the most negative of circumstances. We tend to see what we’re looking for.
You can see that principle at work in Matthew 12. “At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, ‘Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath’.”
The Pharisees were ancient narcs—self-appointed faultfinders. It seems they could find something wrong with just about everything.
Matthew 12:9 says, “Going on from that place, he [Jesus] went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath’?” Jesus says, “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then he said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.”
You’ve got to be kidding me! The Pharisees witness this amazing miracle with their own eyes, but they get hung up on the fact that Jesus does it on the “wrong day.” They found something negative in the most positive circumstances. Why? Because it says they were “looking for a reason to accuse Jesus.” They were faultfinders. They had critical spirits. And people with a critical spirit can find something wrong with anything—even a miracle!
In stark contrast, Jesus had an amazing ability to find something positive in the most negative of circumstances. Matthew 12:20 is one of the most poetic and profound descriptions of Jesus’ approach to life and ministry. “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”
Nothing is more fragile than a bruised reed. Nothing is more tenuous than a smoldering wick. But Jesus was always looking for something salvageable, something redeemable.
Banged Up
One of my favorite scenes in Seabiscuit is the initial meeting between Charles Howard, the millionaire owner of Seabiscuit, and Tom Smith, the man who would become his trainer.
Smith is taking care of an injured horse that others wanted to put down. Howard asks, “Will he race again?” Smith says, “No. Not that one.” Howard says, “So why are you fixing him?” Smith says, “Because I can. Every horse is good for something. He could be a cart horse or a lead pony and he’s still nice to look at.” Then he says what I think is a microcosm of this movie. “You don’t throw a whole life away just because he’s banged up a little.” That is what this movie is about.
Seabiscuit was banged up. During one stretch early in his career he lost sixteen races in a row. He was so misunderstood and mishandled that he forgot how to be a horse. He was actually trained to lose to help other horses learn how to win.
Charles Howard was banged up. He lost his son in a tragic auto accident and never fully recovered. Tom Smith was banged up. He was shunned by the racing community because he walked to the beat of a different drummer. And Red Pollard, Seabiscuit’s jockey, was banged up. He was abandoned at a race track as a child. And he had one of the lowest winning percentages of any jockey anywhere!
This is a movie about three men and a horse who are banged up. But that’s why I think it resonates with us. Because all of us experience bumps and bruises—we’re banged up! But God doesn’t throw away a whole life just because it’s banged up a little. A bruised reed he will not break and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out!
I love Laura Hillenbrand’s description of how these banged up people became one of the most successful teams in racing history. “The scattered lives of Red Pollard, Tom Smith, and Charles Howard had come to an intersection. Their crowded hour had begun.”
What a great description of church—scattered lives coming to an intersection.
An Eye for Potential
Laura Hillenbrand describes Seabiscuit this way. “The horse was a train wreck. He paced his stall incessantly. He broke into a lather at the sight of a saddle. He was two hundred pounds overweight and chronically tired. Seabiscuit didn’t run, he rampaged. When the rider asked him for speed, the horse slowed down. When he tried to rein him in, the horse bolted. Asked to go left, he’d dodge right; tugged right, he’d dart left.”
The most accomplished trainer in America, Sonny Fitzsimmons, gave up on Seabiscuit. Fitzsimmons said he was “dead lazy.”
Everybody saw what was wrong with Seabiscuit. They focused on his size—he was too small. They focused on his bad habits—he ate too much and slept too much. And they focused on his personality—he had a temper. Hillenbrand said, “Countless horsemen had run their eyes over that plain bay body. None of them had seen what Smith saw.” I love the narration in the movie. “There was a limp in his walk. A wheezing when he breathed. Smith didn’t pay attention to that.”
Smith lived by a single maxim: “Learn your horse. Each one is an individual, and once you penetrate his mind and heart, you can often work wonders.” Smith would literally spend hours on end, almost motionless, just watching and studying Seabiscuit. And he saw what no one else could see.
Simply put: Tom Smith had an eye for potential. So did Charles Howard. Hillenbrand writes, “Howard was blessed with an uncanny ability to see potential in unlikely places.” And here is my favorite sentence in the entire book. “Howard had a weakness for lost causes.”
Lost Causes
When I read those descriptions of Howard I couldn’t help but think of Jesus. Jesus had the uncanny ability to see potential in unlikely places. And he had a weakness for lost causes.
The demoniac was a lost cause—filled with a legion of demons. The woman with the issue of blood was a lost cause—specialist after specialist called her condition incurable. The man born blind was a lost cause—there were no synapses between his optical nerve and cerebral cortex. The woman caught in the act of adultery was a lost cause—she had broken her marriage vows. The lepers were lost causes. The prostitutes were lost causes. The tax collectors were lost causes. But Jesus had a weakness for lost causes—the bruised reeds and smoldering wicks.
You may feel like a lost cause—a relationship seems irreconcilable, a situation seems impossible, a hurt seems incurable. You may feel like you are beyond despair, beyond discouragement, beyond doubt. You feel like a bruised reed or a smoldering wick.
You need to know that Jesus has a weakness for lost causes!
Dehumanizing
Luke 7 tells the story of a “lost cause.”
“When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisees house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.”
There is a powerful parallel between the movie and this passage. Listen to Tom Smith’s assessment of Seabiscuit. “He’s so beat up it’s hard to tell what he’s like. He’s forgotten what he was born to do. He just needs to learn how to be a horse again.”
The woman in Luke 7 is so beat up it’s hard to tell what she’s really like. She had been selling herself for sex. She didn’t experience the intimacy that God intended between a husband and wife. She experienced the emptiness of being used by partner after partner after partner. It was dehumanizing. I think she had forgotten what she was born to do. She had to learn how to be human again.
Future Tense
Luke 7:39 says, “When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind or woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Let me make an observation. This Pharisee saw this woman in the present tense. He said, “She is a sinner.” And I’m not denying her present reality. But Jesus had the ability to see past the present and into the future. He could see people in the future tense—who they could become. In another passage in the gospels, Jesus actually prophesies. “Wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”
People generally live up or live down to our expectations.
Goethe said, “Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.”
Jesus gave this woman something to live up to!
Prophet
A few years ago I read a book by Laurie Beth Jones titled The Power of Positive Prophecy. Jones says, “The true spirit of prophecy is encouraging the people around us to see themselves as God sees them.”
Let me share one of the stories that Jones shares in the book.
“I grew up in an alcoholic household where I never heard a positive word. On my way home from school I would always stop in at Jimmy’s, the local dry cleaner, because he kept candy on the counter. He got to know me, and told me one afternoon, ‘Michael, you are a very smart boy. Someday you are going to run a very big business.’ I would listen to him in disbelief and return home only to get called a ‘dog’ and knocked around by my dad. Jimmy the dry cleaner was the only person I can remember believing in me. Today I run a multimillion-dollar health care organization, just like Jimmy predicted. I guess you could say that a dry cleaner was the prophet in my life.”
I love that last statement—“a dry cleaner was the prophet in my life.”
I dare say that very few of us think of ourselves as prophets. When we hear the word “prophet,” most of us think of a very small, very select group of individuals that lived a long time ago. But consider the ramifications of Numbers 11:29. Moses says, “I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets.”
Jewish philosophers did not believe that the prophetic gift was reserved for a few select individuals. They believed that becoming prophetic was the crowing point of mental and spiritual development. It was a supernatural by-product of spiritual development—the more you grow the more prophetic you become.
Laurie Beth Jones says that 40% of our lives are based on personal prophecies. I’m not sure that a statistic like that can be substantiated, but all of us need a prophet in our lives. We need someone who sees our God-given potential and gives us something to live up to.
New Horse
Seabiscuit had to be retrained and rehabilitated. But that is exactly what Howard and Smith and Pollard did. Hillenbrand said that Smith “believed with complete conviction that no animal was permanently ruined.” Hillenbrand writes, “He was a new horse. In the fiftieth start of his life, Seabiscuit finally understood the game. Smith and Pollard had unearthed in him, in Smith’s words, ‘more natural inclination to run that any horse I have ever seen.”
On November 1, 1938, Seabiscuit won what is still widely regarded as the greatest horse race ever run. Every Daily Racing Form handicapper had picked War Admiral to win. Ninety-five percent of sports writers picked War Admiral to win the race.
The race was scheduled on a Tuesday to keep attendance down. Pimlico had a maximum capacity of sixteen thousand. Nearly forty thousand people packed the racetrack that day and ten thousand fans were gathered ten deep outside the track. Grantland Rice said it was “the highest tension I have ever seen in sport.” He said it was the type of tension that “locks the human throat.” Forty million Americans tuned in their radios to listen to the race, including the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
By virtue of his victory, Seabiscuit won Horse of the Year honors in 1938. By the time his career was over with, Seabiscuit had won thirty-three races and set thirteen track records! He earned a world record $437,730 over the course of his career—nearly sixty times his purchase price!
But it all started with a weakness for lost causes!
God is in the business of giving second chances! He doesn’t throw away a life just because it’s a little banged up. A bruised reed he will not break and a smoldering wick he will not smother!
God will give you a second chance if you give God a second chance! In the words of George Eliot, “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.”