There are moments in sports that seem almost too perfectly scripted to be real. A game appears to be over. The clock reaches zero. The crowd goes silent. One team begins to celebrate while the other walks away in disbelief. And then, somehow, impossibly, there is one more chance.
That is what happened last Saturday night in Ann Arbor.
Michigan was trailing Western Michigan 12-7 on Sept. 5 with the game seemingly over. The Wolverines had one final desperate opportunity. Quarterback Bryce Underwood dropped back and heaved the football toward the end zone. The ball sailed through the air, but the pass appeared to fall incomplete as the clock showed zero. Western Michigan had seemingly pulled off a monumental upset.
But then came the review. Officials determined that a Western Michigan player had touched the ball while one second remained on the clock. Suddenly, the impossible became possible. Michigan had one more play. One more chance. One more prayer.
And on that final play, Underwood launched another Hail Mary. The ball traveled 47 yards through the night sky, into a crowded end zone, where J.J. Buchanan came down with it for a touchdown. Michigan won, 13-12.
Think about that for a moment. The game was over. Except it wasn’t. And perhaps that is exactly the message we need to hear as we all approach Rosh Hashanah.
We live in a world where we are constantly tempted to believe that something is finished. A relationship is broken. A child is struggling. A business opportunity disappears. A dream seems impossible. A person receives difficult news and begins to think, “There is nothing more I can do.”
Sometimes, the clock seems to say zero. But Judaism teaches us to never stop praying.
The Talmud in Berachot 10a tells us that even when, metaphorically, an axe is resting over a person’s neck, he should not despair of God’s mercy. Even at the moment when everything appears hopeless, we continue to pray for salvation. The lesson is not that we are guaranteed to receive precisely what we want. The lesson is that we are never entitled to declare that the story is over.
That is the extraordinary power of prayer.
And there is another Talmudic Passage (Berachot 32b) that makes this even more profound” the gates of tears are never locked.”
But if the gates are never locked, why do we need gates? A gate, by definition, suggests that something can be opened or closed. If the gates of prayer are never shut, what exactly is the purpose of having gates?
Perhaps the answer is one of the most beautiful ideas we can carry with us into the New Year.
Judaism teaches that our mistakes do not have to define the rest of our lives.
The gates may never be closed to our tears, but God may sometimes close the gates to the particular request we are praying for.
We may desperately want something. We may pray with all our hearts. We may believe that we know exactly what we need. And yet, sometimes, in His infinite mercy, God does not give us what we ask for. Not because He didn’t hear us.
Not because our prayer was worthless. But because He knows in His infinite wisdom that what we are crying out for is not in our best interests.
Sometimes, the greatest answer to a prayer is the answer we did not expect. A child begs a parent for something dangerous. The parent says no. The child thinks the parent is being cruel. But the parent sees what the child cannot see. The closed door is itself an act of love.
Perhaps that is what the gates teach us. The gates of tears are always open because God always wants to hear us. But the particular door we are asking Him to open may remain closed because He knows what lies on the other side.
And that brings us back to Michigan.
Imagine being a Michigan player after that first Hail Mary appeared to fail. Imagine the emotional whiplash. The clock showed zero. Western Michigan celebrated. The opportunity seemed gone.
But then: one second. One second was all they needed. They didn’t know what would happen. They didn’t know whether the second attempt would succeed. They didn’t know whether the ball would be intercepted, knocked down or fall harmlessly to the ground. They simply had another chance. And they took it.
That is the message of the Hail Mary as we enter Rosh Hashanah. Don’t give up because the clock says zero. Do not stop praying because the answer has not yet come. Do not assume that because one door closed, every door is closed. And perhaps most importantly, do not confuse God’s silence with God’s absence.
Rosh Hashanah is the time when we stand before the King of the universe and ask for another year, another opportunity, another chance to become better, holier, kinder and more connected to Him. We come with our hopes and our fears, our accomplishments and our failures. We come knowing that we cannot control what the coming year will bring.
But we can control whether we continue to hope. We can control whether we continue to pray. We can control whether we continue to believe that we can make tomorrow better than today.
The Michigan players did not need to know how the story would end. They only needed to know that the story had not yet ended. And neither has ours.
As we enter the Days of Awe, let us take that lesson with us. When life tells us, “It’s over,” let us remember that we may not know what God has planned. When we pray and do not receive the answer we want, let us remember that the gates of prayer and tears are indeed open. And when the axe seems to be hanging overhead, let us remember the teaching of our sages: never stop praying for God’s mercy.
Sometimes, there is only one second left. Sometimes, there is only one play. Sometimes, all we can do is throw the ball into the heavens and hope. But sometimes, when we are equipped with the power of prayer, tears and hope, the ball comes down exactly where it needs to be.
And there is one more lesson we should take with us into Rosh Hashanah: We all make mistakes. We all have moments we wish we could replay. We all have words we wish we had never said, opportunities we wish we had taken and choices we wish we could change. But Judaism teaches that our mistakes do not have to define the rest of our lives.
Just as Michigan was given one more second, we, too, are given another opportunity. The past may be written, but the future is still waiting to be written. So let us give it everything we have.
Because the clock may say zero. But with God, there is always another second.
And if we use that second wisely, give it all that we have, and place our trust in the One above, may we all score the greatest victory of all: a wonderful, sweet, healthy, peaceful New Year for all of our blessed people.
