Curling: Some Things We'll Never Understand Series

It just wasn’t right. Peter had done a lot of weird and wonderful things over the past three years but he wasn’t going to let Jesus wash his feet. That was a servant’s job, and besides Peter had feet like a hobbit’s and while Jesus had certainly touched the fisherman’s heart, Peter didn’t want him touching his feet.

And as Peter protested Christ’s actions Jesus looked at him and said John 13:7 Jesus replied, “You don’t understand now why I am doing it; someday you will.”

You don’t understand now. If Jesus was to look down at me as I watched Curling during the Olympics he would have said “You don’t understand now; someday you will.” And that promise is real, because when I get to heaven I’m going to have perfect knowledge and I’ll walk through the pearly gates and go “Wow, now I know, I know why they sweep like that and why they shout.” I have tried, I’ve gone online and discovered that Curling was probably developed in Scotland around 1510 and that it was first played as a demonstration sport in the winter Olympics in Innsburg in 1964 and then again in Calgary in 1988. And became an official sport in the Winter Olympics in 1998. Where Canada won a Gold in the women’s and a silver in the men’s.

As for understanding the game itself, I went onto the internet and found the rules for the game. I looked at it and thought this isn’t that tough. And then I made a mistake, you know what they say about a little knowledge. I decided to read the final analyse of the game that the Canadian Women lost to the British on Wednesday Afternoon. “The Canadian skip failed to execute a hit and roll that would have allowed her to blank the first end. As a result, she was forced to take a single in and surrender the hammer. Britain then scored one in the third and stole two more in the fourth. With the two teams tied 5-5 in the 10th end, Britain was lying one when the two skips stepped into the hack for their rocks. Law put her first stone just in front of the British shot rock, but Martin elected to knock both out with her shot to leave the house open.

Law put her final shot deep in the eight-foot, leaving Martin the open draw for the win. And Martin made no mistake, easily putting her final rock in for the victory.”

It was then that I realized the only thing that I have understood about the game was when Jay Leno said “Did you see the curling today? Pretty exciting! The gold medal ended up going to a Brazilian cleaning team.”

However never one to give up, I pressed ahead in the quest for curling knowledge and then it all made sense because I discovered that curling wasn’t invented in Scotland that it was invented in the Holy Land. Really, the way I figured that out is by all the references to curling in the bible. Sure, I’m not kidding. First the rules of a brief overview of the rules: Each team is made up of four players: the lead, the second, the third and the skip. The skip is the captain of the team and calls the shots while mapping out strategy. He or she is the last to throw in a round or an "end."

The four players take turns throwing two stones each down the ice sheet with the goal of landing a stone in the target area of three concentric rings known as "the house;" taking out opposing stones; or setting up "guards," either to protect their stones or to prevent the opposition from penetrating the rings.

Here are the descriptions from the Bible. First we have instructions for the lead found in John 8:7 where it says: let him cast the first stone.

And then if the lead has two stones into the house there’s instruction for the second:

Ezekiel 38:7 be a guard for them.

And then in Isaiah we find this obvious curling statement Isaiah 14:23 "I will sweep with the broom of destruction."

And then the word describes the shots made by the third: Nahum 1:6 "The rocks are thrown down by him."

It also records the remarks of surprise and joy made by his Skip or the Captain: In Psalm 78:20 Behold, He struck the rock, and then in Job 14:8 "Their rock is removed out of place."

But the Bible only makes one comment about the activity of the Skip or the Captain of the team And that is found in the New Testament: Matthew 20:6 ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day?’

So now you understand curling, but what about the other questions we as Christians struggle with? Some of these things can be answered with the words that Christ spoke to Peter “You don’t understand now why I am doing it; someday you will.” And in some of those cases “Someday” will defined in temporal terms, next week, next year sometime in the future. But we need to understand that for some of the answers we are going to have to wait until we stand before God. And just as you will understand curling at that time you will understand the answers to the other questions as well. Now if I was to ask you what some of the questions were that you struggled with in your Christian life we could probably fill a fair sized list.