My kids are avid collectors of baseball cards. Their eagerness for acquiring new cards reminded me recently of my own boyhood enthusiasm for collecting and trading the pictures of the heroes of my own generation. I had great admiration for the ball players pictured on the placards and spent a great deal of time memorizing and analyzing the data recorded on the back of each card. As I grew older, however, I learned some painful lessons about heroes. In real life, the flesh and blood players never quite measured up to the image projected on the cards. When I discovered the sometimes sordid details of their personal lives, I felt that I had been betrayed... and my enthusiasm for the cards waned...

Life is never what we wish it were. People have a way of letting us done. But there is ONE upon whom we can always depend - One who will not fail us or disappoint us. Jesus is the one truly heroic personality in all of human history. He is the "captain of our salvation", the "author and finisher of our faith", and the "Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world". The difference between Christ and earthly heroes is evident in the following catalogue of the shortcomings of heroes.