Tonight's game is more than a game. It is a battle between good and evil in which goodness and love will overcome.
The Giants are peaking at the right time. They have finally, after many years, begun to dominate their opponents. They have the best running back in the league, the coach of the year, and a rising star in quarterback Daniel Jones.
The Eagles have an injured quarterback and are coming off a 'bye' week so they might not be the well-oiled machine their opponent has become, and may need to shake the rust off, especially in the first half.
But there's a reason they have broken their regular season win record to claim the top spot in the NFC this year. On paper, their team has a more impressive combined resume. At the same time the Giants are hot at the right time, which historically plays a key role in getting teams through January to The Big Show. They're also playing with house money - with nothing to lose and everything to gain - so they can play loose and relaxed, but with the focus, poise, composure and class the organization has always been known for that Jones is now clearly exemplifying.
All this combines to mean this is going to be a great game. A one-score game. A miracle-catch-leading-to-a-last-drive-score-for-the-win kind of game. The Giants will need to be perfect and have a miracle happen for the #6 to upset the #1.
That's where The Great G-Man in the Sky comes in.
For they will have that miracle.
For at their heart they are not The New York Giants, but The New Jersey Magi-ants, as they play on that Garden State of land that glues these two historically vital metropolises together and eternally have the magical powers we saw with Eli Manning on those two Super Bowl runs.
They will need Giants faithful, with all their class and poise that Philly lacks, to believe and pray today in the higher power that has and will always come through for them. Tonight the Giants reclaim their magic, but it is not their own magic, but God's. It is the magic of love and goodness itself. It works when you do the right thing in your heart, moment to moment, and get out of your own way so the magic can happen from that which is beyond us as humans.
Jones, Barkley and Daboll will be the three wisemen ushering in the birth of the baby Gesus. They will take back the extra 'G' they need not just from God, not just from Gesus, not just from goodness, but from The EaGles themselves. And behind that 'G' will reveal a 'V' and their true identity that has been lying deceitfully in wait: The Viladelphia EAVLES.
The Magi-ants purpose will not be to simply win a football game, but to cleanse a corrupt team and city of its evil.
For "The City of Brotherly Love" has become the "City of Brothers With Guns." Philadelphia has become Killadelphia. It is time the "Gangsta" mentality of so many there be returned, in faith, to that Original Gangsta Upstairs that is the God that is love. Through loss they will be humbled and grow and change (Que the Stallone speech at the end of Rocky IV).
It will be a lions' den of a hostile environment at Lincoln Financial Field tonight. We send out this prayer that those classless, corrupted Eavles fans might find the ounce of goodness and love left in their hearts from their childhoods when they were first made full of love to relent from committing any acts of violence to Giants fans.
Yell and scream all you want to, roast each other with quips like the ones found in this article while you still have the Freedom of Speech in this country that was ratified in The U.S. Constitution at Independence Hall so long ago to do so. But do not allow the evil that has corrupted so many a Philly fan's heart to take things to fisticuffs or beyond.
We pray our Giants faithful have no fear as they don their gear and head into that dark shadowy den of lions and evil.
For the Eagles have become Lions. The Kings of the Jungle. But what lions do is build an empire of territory then lie in wait and comfort, occasionally striking when their ladies get hungry. They have lost the eagle within. They bleed green, not red, white and blue as they have become lost in a Pennsylvania forest of damnation.
Today that Great American Bald Eagle takes its majestic flight across the Delaware to the Jersey side. The wiser, more poised Giants will be the eagles tonight; the watchful eye tacticians who have taught their children to fly while still young and blind, and now to hunt their prey as needed when weaknesses are brought to light.
It is the land itself The New Jersey Magi-ants will pull its miracle energy from to cleanse it of its own corruption. That gap that is New Jersey between Philly and NYC is the same gap that remains between you and me.
Through a miraculous win tonight, that gap will be closed and we will be United as people. We can hold onto the most bitter of rivalries in sports for the purpose of being entertained, but when that clock strikes zero and the most eavle of Philly fans are humbled by the Grace of God that's been displayed on the field before them, we will, for a few brief hours be bound by that which eternally binds us all.
And that is love itself. Love for a game. Love for THE game. Love for the struggle. Love for survival. Love for life and the quality of it. That we might even be able to take a few hours out of that struggle to survive to come together and be entertained by what will be a great game as one human family, United under the God that is love, as Gesus always wanted and as goodness itself prevails.
Be safe out there.
We are one.
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