God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

The Four Spiritual Laws

Thus begins a classic tract of a witnessing Christian Church in which I was raised. A tract is a small pamphlet for people in a hurry to remind them in their busyness of their eternal destiny and worth in the eyes of Almighty God. I saw a movie tonight that epitomizes this message through the narrative of an unlikely football hero, a washed up old timer who missed his one chance to play pro only to claw, scrape and grind his way back into the contest. American Underdog about the story of St. Louis Ram’s quarterback Kurt Warner will leave you overcome with hope.

But it is not some kind of sappy Disneyland hope that if someone just believes enough in themselves, they can accomplish anything. Of course, Kurt has dreams to surpass the great Joe Montana, but the way he accomplishes this has to do more with a belief in something or rather Someone outside of himself. He meets a woman in a bar who is divorced with two children. She is tying to make ends meet, but dares to believe in something she heard from a church when she was younger and more idealistic that not only would her life amount to something but it would take on a special purpose.

Kurt dares to take on the same hope in a special purpose, one that he discovers in a game he deeply loves. While everyone who seems to know something is denouncing him as a has-been, washed up loser, he manages through prayer and with God’s help to overcome their disbelief. Finally, when he is honest about his love for this woman met in a bar, he is able to live out his dream with its full intensity and purpose.

The underdog coming back and beating all odds to win is a great American trope for story-telling. This movie lives up to that trope and does it one better by involving eternity in that come back.