Does God care who wins the Super Bowl?

From an interesting article by John Walters at NBC Sports:

Lusk played three NFL seasons. Uncommonly close with his coach, Dick Vermeil, Lusk spent one day at training camp in 1979 and then left to begin his ministry. When he began at his church in run-down North Philadelphia, he had 17 members and two mortgages.

Today? “We have more than 200 employees,” says Lusk. “We give out 8,000 food baskets at Christmas. Mentor 1,000 children of inmates. We train about 3,000 welfare recipients per year on how to enter the work force. The same bank building that used to turn us down for loans? Now we own that bank.”

Kurt Warner was not drafted out of college. Today, every time his family dines at a restaurant, he buys dinner for another table. Anonymously. His children choose the family.

Ben Roethlisberger did not start at quarterback until his senior year of high school. Five years later, in his 2004 rookie season, he donated his first playoff game check — $18,000 — for tsunami relief.

“We serve people who are Christian, who are Muslim, who are atheist,” says Lusk, who considers all these public pigskin proselytizers his sons. “My obligation is to humanity. Why would you take that away from me, that which motivates me to help people?”

You can’t know. You can only have faith. Still, at the end of every hard earned day, people find some reason to believe. Those are not my words. Those are the words of one of the world’s greatest living evangelists, a man who preaches rock-and-roll salvation. A man who on Sunday night, for nearly half an hour, will preach his gospel at halftime of the most viewed television event of the year. Bruce Springsteen.

People find some reason to believe. And as long as they do, other people will find some reason to dismiss it.