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As I write this, the post-mortems have only just begun. Questions are being asked and angry responses are being offered by everyone. The experts are telling us that they were warning us all along, when in reality they were involved in building up everybody’s expectations. Across the country there is a flat feeling. What am I talking about; the recession? the budget? No, England are out of the World Cup!

Writing and reading this on this side of Offa’s Dyke there is, of course, a rather mixed feeling. Some of us have very little sympathy for the English at any time, especially when it comes to the obsession with football. After all, Wales has enough to worry about with our rugby side getting thumped every time they play someone from South of the Equator, and our football team didn’t even qualify for South Africa 2010! But as we watch from the touchlines, as Christians, we surely have something to say about what the event has revealed about our land.

One of the things that the Bible tells us is that people need to worship somebody or something. We are created as worshipping beings. It is more a part of us than our DNA structure. That is why wherever man has gone in the world, whenever a new tribe or people group has been discovered by intrepid explorers, we have found them worshipping some god or other. Before Adam and Eve sinned, that inclination to worship found its right focus, but ever since then, like the rest of our humanity, it has been distorted by sin, and instead of worshipping the true God, we idolise false ones. Richard Dawkins and the secular fundamentalists try to kid us that we have left such thinking behind, but events like those of the last few weeks show us that this is not the case. The amount of time and money people spend following their heroes, the passion and pride, the crushing disappointment when it all goes wrong, all testify otherwise. And for those for whom it is not football, the focus of attention is music, or fashion, or film stars, or cars, or even family and home. Whatever is uppermost in our hearts and mind, whatever fills our thinking in our spare moments, whatever is most dear to us, is what we worship. And if that is not God, we will always end up disappointed.

One of the troubles with such idols is that they always let us down. They can never satisfy us, because we are trying to replace the One who can never be replaced! That might be easy to see when our favourite team loses 4-1 to the ‘Old Enemy’, but is equally true even if the scoreline was reversed. Any ‘high’ they can give us will be shortlived, because we were created to enjoy something better – God Himself. That is why, when faced with idoltry in a city called Lystra, Paul told the people there to “turn from these vain things to the living God” (Acts 14:15). Ultimately, whatever our idol, it is empty because it can never help us in the face of death. For that, we need the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son, who has conquered death that we might have fullness of life on earth, an eternal life that begins here and continues in Heaven (John 10:10) . Who or what is taking His rightful place in your life?