Boxer Marvin Hagler once said:  "It's tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5 A.M. when you've been sleeping in silk pajamas."  Live long enough and you'll see champions fall.  You'll see those who look the strongest get complacent and slip up.  We try to convince our minds to accept what we see.  We plead with our heroes to say it ain't so.  But a cold world just keeps on moving as if to say, "Deal with it, kid."  So, in he absence of a better alternative, we do.  We go home and see our kids, expectantly looking up at us.  It's easy to think something like:  "Who's going to be left to encourage them, for them to admire, to see standing as an example?"  

It's got to be me, and it's got to be you.  It's not the Christian musician we've admired from afar.  It's not the professional athlete who points heavenward once he's reached the end-zone.  It's not even our favorite preacher.  It's me.  It's the man of unimpressive stature, just past his physical prime, who just had to go up a t-shirt size (not for good reasons), who put his personal pursuits aside to be a Daddy, who can't dance, who loves their mother, who drives a minivan (and, if I may say so, kind of makes it look cool), who tells bedtime stories, who lost a game of checkers to his eight year-old last night, who says "Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1), who has hidden God's Word in his heart that he might not fail his family, who is well-acquainted, nay, intimate with the intricacies of Veggie-Tales, who is less creeped out by a Kieth Hernandez 'stache than a man in skinny jeans and a man-bun, who just doesn't get the appeal of Ed Sheeran and/or his music, who has become accustomed to waking up with his two year-old's feet physically touching his face.  That's who.

Once when I was in college, my school was hosting the conference cross country championship meet.  The day before, I was riding around the golf course with my coach in the cart putting out course-marker flags in a cold drizzle.  After placing a few flags, I hopped back into the cart, and he looked at me and asked, "It's glamorous, isn't it?  You sure this is what you want to do?"  (He knew that I wanted to become a running coach.)  We shared a knowing smile and rode on to the next bend in the course.  Gentlemen, it's those of us who will work, when nobody's there to see us, to do what needs to be done, who will pray for our families, who will train ourselves in the Word of the Lord, who will go out in the cold and rain to mark the course for our kids, who will come home and spend time with our families, instead of going to the gym or the bar who will be left standing, even after these bodies have given out and we're gone.  When the heroes fall, shock us, and break our hearts, our worlds and our kids' worlds won't have to fall apart, because they were never built around those guys anyway.