My head was pounding, my eyes were swollen and the stabbing pain around my sinuses made me reasonably sure that my nose was broken. I could taste blood flowing inside my mouth. I was sitting on a folding stool in the corner of the boxing ring looking across the length of the canvas at my opponent sitting in the other corner. He stared straight back at me. Absentmindedly, my tongue searched for the source of the bloodflow and found scores of little strips of flesh where the inside of my cheeks had been minced against my teeth during a couple of well-placed left and right hooks. Exhausted, I leaned back on the corner pole resting my elbows on the ropes. My arms were so tired that, during the preceding round, it was a battle to lift my hands even to protect my face. My breaths came in deep, violent gasps, punctuated by snorts and hacking coughs as I ejected blood, snot and spittle into a bucket that my second held out for me. It was 2001 and I was a brand-new digger (Australian soldier) trying to prove his worth to his company in the First Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment’s annual battalion boxing competition.
My company sergeant-major, a stout, grizzled and greying warrant officer named Boye, had taken on the job of being my coach for this fly-by-night event. He said something to me about ducking or moving or keeping my hands up or something. I couldn’t really understand because it felt like there was cotton wool in my brain. Thinking about anything was a struggle, so I just ignored him. Instead, I focused on trying to stare down and hopefully psyche out my opponent. Good luck with that. Private Horton was a full half-a-head taller than me as well as being stronger than me, fitter than me and broader around the shoulders. He had a reputation for vicious drunken brawling and the new guys in the battalion (like me) feared him.
I knew that the rest between rounds was only one minute, and oh how I wanted that minute to last! When it was all I could do not to throw up or pass out from utter exhaustion, every second sitting on that rusty little stool, greasy as it was with previous fighters’ sweat, was precious.
Without warning, water squirted into my gaping mouth (I’d never tasted anything so sweet and beautiful in my life), my mouthguard jammed in immediately afterward and I was pulled off my stool. My little time in heaven was over. The referee summoned us to the centre of the ring, the bell rang and off we went: windmilling furiously at each other again.
The subsequent round was simultaneously the hardest and most painful three minutes of my life. What I lacked in energy, strength, perseverance, fitness, agility, experience and boxing know-how, I made up for in hardness of head. Somewhere between the first and second rounds, I had won the jeering crowd of my fellow soldiers’ respect through my sheer ability to absorb punishment. But exhausted and punch-drunk as I was, nothing could have prepared me for the absolute annihilation that was the third round. Although I was later told by spectators that I had gotten a few good shots in, and even almost took the day once or twice, from my end it felt like that Flatley guy from the old Irish Lord of the Dance troupe had free rein to use my head to do his little jig on. Unable to summon the strength to lift my hands to protect myself, it felt as if my opponent simply slogged me left and right as hard as he could, again and again and again, more times than I could count.
There were times that I couldn’t see, I felt I didn’t know which direction to face, which way was up or even why I was there in the first place. I stumbled around, swinging blindly for what felt like an absolute eternity, taking devastating punishment to my head and torso, until I finally heard the sweetest sound that my ears had ever received. A music so beautiful that it lifted my soul from utter hopelessness, pain and despair into a place of relief, joy and happiness: a two-note bell. Ding! Ding!
Immediately we both stopped. I stumbled into my corner and collapsed onto that grimy little chair with gratitude. It was over. WO2 Boye put his hands on my shoulders and said “You’ve gone down this time, mate. But guts effort.”
“Thanks, sir,” was all I could muster.
When the referee brought us together again to hear the judge’s decisions and (of course) award Private Horton the victory, something very strange happened that I had not expected (seeing as I’d never even seen, let alone competed in, a boxing match prior to this day).
My opponent gave me a huge hug.
Not just one of those perfunctory macho “man-hugs”, either. He gave me a great big bear hug and he held on for a while longer. Overwhelmed I hugged him right back. “Great fight,” he said into my ear. “Well done.”
“Thanks mate, you too,” I said, before adding, “No rematch, OK?”
After that point, although never really friends, Horton and I shared a mutual respect, acknowledged by a nod of the head in passing. We had stood toe-to-toe with each other, bleeding and being bled, and both of us had refused to back down. As a result, two men who had formerly both been enemies, putting everything they had into granting the other the sweet rest of unconsciousness, could now embrace in respect as sportsmen and colleagues. How strange to be united over this!
Twenty-four years later, I am now on a very different path to what I was at age 18. I am currently working as a minister of religion and have sworn off physical fighting, except in defence of self and others. However, as I reflect on that seemingly contradictory and bizarre interaction, I am powerfully reminded of how God deals with you and me.
In Colossians 1:21,22, the apostle Paul remarked, “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”
The Bible says that because of our evil choices to harm others, we became enemies of a perfectly righteous God. If nothing changed, we would be destined for destruction, because a good God must, because of His nature, bring an end to evil.
However, God was able to reconcile with us in relationship because Jesus took the punishment of our bad choices onto Himself when He died on the cross. It’s like when one minute Horton and I were punching each other and the next minute we were hugging. What made all the difference was the bell.
If you were honest with yourself, would you admit that you feel like God’s enemy? Like you’re fighting against Him? The difference between God and Private Horton is that even if you feel like an enemy of God (or that God is your enemy), He doesn’t feel the same way. It’s the Enemy (sometimes called “the Accuser” or “Satan”) who is pummelling you, trying to convince you that God is against you; that God will never accept you; that God condemns you for all your mistakes. The apostle Paul once said, in Romans 5:10, “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” When once you and God were separated forever by sin, now you can embrace forever like loving family, and what made the difference was the cross.
Jesus says to you today, “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37).
Won’t you embrace Him today?
Daniel Matteo is a Seventh-day Adventist pastor in Victoria, Australia. If you’d like to meet the God who is waiting for you, start the course on the next page.
