 For the past 25 years I have been coaching high school basketball. I started out as an Assistant Junior Varsity Coach and then became an Assistant Varsity Coach. From there I went on to coach my own team starting at the freshman level, working up to JV and then the last 13 years was a Varsity coach. When I look back at it, I have been coaching for over half of my life; however, this has come to an end. A couple weeks ago I told my High School basketball team and their parents that this was my last year of coaching. It is still a little hard to comprehend because I have been doing it for so long. I am going to miss it tremendously, but as my responsibilities as an administrator continue to grow it has reached the time to hang up the clipboard.  I think there are some things that we count on to never change. Before I coached I played college basketball for four years, before that, high school and before that grade school basketball. I have been part of a team for the last 37 years. The last time I wasn’t part of a team I was nine years old. For me there was the constant that as October turned to November basketball practice would begin and we would start a new season. That will no longer be the case. I am uncomfortable with the change and know there will be times I won’t like it. There is one thing we can count on that never changes. Hebrews 13:8 tells us, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Even the things in our lives that we think will never end, or we try to hold on to, will eventually come to an end. But Jesus will always be the same. He will love us the same, He will forgive us the same, He will celebrate the good and comfort us in the hard times. When the calendar turns to winter next year there will be times I wish I was still coaching and that it didn’t have to change. But I also rest assured in knowing that Jesus is the same for me whether I am coaching or not and He truly will never change.
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 I love that I am in a place where I’m constantly learning. Every Tuesday and Thursday at the High School where I work, we have chapel, and there always seems to be at least one thing I learn that’s new, or at the very least causes me to think differently about my faith. This morning our Pastor, Jamie, shared a message about how God takes what is crooked and straightens it. We don’t need to come to God in perfect shape; we just need to come to Him. He will take care of changing us and fixing us. Pastor Jamie often reminds us that God will never leave us alone. This also means He will never leave us alone. You can read this sentence two different ways, depending on the emphasis. God never leaves us, so we are comforted that He is always there, the common way in which we think of him never leaving us alone. The other way to read that sentence is to imagine a person who won’t leave you alone…..that person who won’t stop calling or texting, or maybe when you were growing up that younger sibling who just kept nagging you because they wanted to always be with you. You see, this is how God is too. He cares about us so much that He won’t leave us alone. He is going to keep working on each of us, persistently and unrelentingly, until He can mold us into the person He wants us to be. Not only will we never be alone, but God will never leave us alone. He has work to do on us and His love is too great to just leave us as we are. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind can imagine what God has prepared for those who love Him.” I am thankful for a God who won’t leave me alone, even when I think I want Him to. |
AuthorBob Koehne, husband to Mia, is an educator, coach, mentor and administrator with a love for Jesus and a passion to see lives impacted for Christ through Christian education. These are just some of his writings. 
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