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The Pursuit of Happiness
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The Pursuit of Happiness
By Stuart Briscoe

It seemed to be the rear view of five very big men in tight yellow pants bent over at an ungainly angle, and I thought: why would they have a camera on that? Standing behind these men was a man also wearing tight yellow pants, and a cute little yellow hat, and he was upset about something, and he was shouting at somebody, and then I realized what was upsetting him. These big men, who were bending over in an ungainly posture, had got his ball. So they gave it to him, and I thought, what a spoiled brat he was because the minute they gave it to him, he gave it to another little man wearing tight yellow pants and a pretty yellow hat.

He started running like a frightened rabbit and then I saw why -- because there were a lot of other big men in tight red pants, and they went after this little man. The men in the yellow pants were satisfied to stop him, and a big fight broke out and they buried this little man and it was all over in five seconds. Then these great big men got up and they stood in a circle, you won’t believe this, and they held hands. I’d never seen men hold hands before, and they prayed. This is encouraging, but their prayer didn’t work because they didn’t take their hats off. They went straight back to doing what they were doing, and it was so incredibly boring. I mean just one time after another they kept doing this, so in the end I switched channels. I thought: this is ridiculous! You know, it was the first day of January, so on every channel, the same thing going on at every channel. I thought, well, this is clearly an unreached people group I’ve come to reach here in America.

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So I went back to the original thing to see what was going on, and the same old thing was going on. They got his ball, they gave it to him, he gave it to the little man. The little man ran like a frightened rabbit, and these big guys piled onto him. But then the most amazing thing happened: this guy, this spoiled brat, he had another ball somewhere, and after he had given one to that little man who ran with it, he threw it down the field to another man with a pretty, little yellow hat on, and he caught it and ran right down to the end of the field and everybody got excited. He stood there, just stood there and he didn’t know what to do, but the crowd did. They shouted to him: TOUCH DOWN, TOUCH DOWN! He had a hat on and he couldn’t hear them, and so he held it up and he never did touch it down, it was so sad.

Then his legs gave way from him, and he started and I thought, this is a weird nation because a man then said, “this was football” He actually said it was football, but they hadn’t put a foot near the ball. Later on, I discovered that occasionally they do, when they’ve run out of other ideas. Then they bring someone from Europe to kick it for them!

So I thought you’d be interested, children, in hearing that explanation of the game called American Football from the eyes of a Brit who is arriving in America. But I did tell the story for another reason, and it is this: Those men were faked out; he didn’t give the ball to the running back. He kept it, but the defense thought the running back got it, and they chased after the man without the ball. You are perfectly free to pursue happiness and you have an inalienable right to pursue it where it ‘ain't!’ And there’s the problem!

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