Defying the Odds (11/02/2025)

Yesterday I learned about Frank Murphy’s life. I had known him as a Heisman Trophy winner and a player for Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Chicago Bears, but I didn’t know the whole story. I didn’t know what he had overcome nor the source of his resiliency and hope.

Yesterday, in an interview, Frank told about his incarceration as a youth. He also shared that a janitor he didn’t know, a woman janitor, came up to him and told him that God sent her to tell him to seek his purpose and to live the life the LORD wanted him to live. She told him she didn’t understand it; she just knew God was telling her to tell Frank that. And she did. And it made a difference.

Frank took that message in faith and reached out to the LORD. While incarcerated, he turned to Christ and placed his faith in our redeemer. And he came to see his purpose in life in God through Jesus. And his life turned around. He was able to pursue his love for football and help other at-risk youth. Today, Frank is retired from the NFL but he is active still, still working on fulfilling his purpose in life as he came to understand it through his relationship with Christ. He is chair of the Athletes for America Coalition that works to promote excellence in athletics and opportunities for at-risk youth.

As Frank spoke, he said that at one point in his conversion journey he realized that God had given him a purpose. And he recognized that he needed to seize that purpose and work daily to realize it. He ended by saying to his interviewer, “I hope others seek their purpose in God through Jesus.

We are created by our LORD with purpose – and we are given our lifetime to grow into the ones He created us to be. We can only come to know that purpose fully in relationship with our LORD. Only through Christ, through our love for Christ, does our true purpose come to light. And it is only in living Christ in the world day in and day out that we can realize our purpose. It all hinges on Christ, Son of God, our brother who gave His life as ransom for ours.

In the interview, Frank spoke of others who helped him to live into his purpose along the way. Most notably, his coach with the Buccaneers, Tony Dungy, who mentored Frank and tried to show him the power of character, resilience, and integrity. That mentoring and encouraging others along the way is part of our callings, each of us. We not only need to discern our own purpose and God’s will for the use of our gifts and lives, but we also need to help others on “the Way” with encouragement, with prayer, with companionship.

This month dedicated to remembering those who came before us, the saints and the souls of the faithful departed, we are called to use it also as a time for reflecting on our own lives and mortality, our own purpose and hope. Let us take time this month to prayerfully reflect and to seek.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.