A friend of mine was there.

He texted a picture an hour before kickoff wearing the #8 for Kirk Cousins sitting next to his dad in a Jared Allen #69 jersey.

They were smiling as they anticipated watching the Minnesota Vikings get the win against the Indianapolis Colts on Saturday and clinch a playoff spot.

The game did not go according to plan.

It was a trainwreck from the start. At halftime, the Colts led 33-0.

As National Football League columnist Peter King reported on nbcsports.com, Vikings veteran Patrick Peterson told the locker room, “All we need is five touchdowns!” Cousins, the starting quarterback admitted afterward, “I thought he was being sarcastic.”

Over five hours after that first text from my friend, after five touchdowns and one final successful field goal that a Vikings kicker actually made, he texted, “I WAS THERE!”

He told me, “at halftime, no one in the stadium thought it was gonna be anything [to stick around for]. A good 15% of the stadium left, but my dad and I paid a lot for the seats, so we weren’t leaving. Two guys next to us did, I bet they feel real stupid.”

This will be a memorable game for Viking fans for years to come. The day the team overcame the largest deficit in NFL history to win 39-36. The previous record, 32 points, happened in a playoff football game when I was a kid. I remember that day as the Buffalo Bills, three straight Super Bowl losers, were down 35-3 and their star quarterback, Jim Kelly was hurt.

Their back-up quarterback, Frank Reich, came in and led the historic comeback 41-38. They’d eventually go on and lose their 4^th straight Super Bowl, but this game was legendary.

Reich did not have sustained success as a quarterback after this mountaintop moment. When he retired, he became a Presbyterian pastor and a motivational speaker who shared how his faith was instrumental in engineering that famous comeback.

Eventually, he returned to football as a coach. After years as an assistant, he became the head coach in 2018 of an NFL team… the Indianapolis Colts.

At the beginning of November, after his team struggled to meet the high expectations they had going into the season, he was surprisingly fired.

Reich was watching the game on Saturday, just like the rest of us, and was shocked to see the team and players he had just coached give away this lead. He still cheers for them and didn’t take joy in their defeat. He was also surprised that his record comeback was eclipsed.

Peter King shared that Reich texted Cousins about the significance of the moment.

Cousins told King, “Frank texted me to say, ‘Kirk, for 30 years, that moment has given me an opportunity to share many things about football and life, tell people about my faith, and now the torch has been passed to you.’ So it was a powerful text. I already had a great deal of respect for Frank but after that text it went through the roof. I took what he said seriously.”

Just another football game? Not for Reich and now Cousins. For the rest of their lives, it’s a chapter in their story of faith to overcome adversity by never giving up on yourself or your teammates.

There’s a lesson there for us. Our faith can be a powerful foundation in our lives.

When I am overwhelmed or feeling pressures, I trust in God for peace. When stuck on where to turn, I pray for God’s guidance. God provides support through the people in my life I can count on when times get tough.

As people of faith, we gather this weekend to remember the story of adversity overcome by a young family. Their journey paves the way for the birth of a savior. It’s a timeless story that we carry with us the rest of our lives.

It’s a story I’ll be there to tell (at 2:30, 4, 5:30, and 7 pm on Christmas Eve and at 9 am on Christmas morning). Merry Christmas and Happy Holy-days!

Pastor John writes a monthly column for the Forest Lake Times. This article appears in the December 22^nd issue.