Cape Verde lost to Argentina and half a million people met their team like conquerors. Zechariah asked who despises the day of small things.
Indeed, who despises the day of small things?… These are the eyes of the LORD, which run back and forth through the whole earth.
Zechariah 4:10
On Sunday, July 5, tens of thousands stood on the runway grounds of Praia's airport, and from the plane it must have looked like the Atlantic had come ashore. An ocean of blue. They had come to meet a football team that lost.
Cape Verde is five hundred thousand people scattered across ten volcanic islands. Ranked 67th. The second-smallest nation at the World Cup, and the smallest ever to reach the knockout rounds. They drew nil-nil with Spain, the European champions, and then took Argentina to extra time before falling 3-2, roughly ten minutes short of a shootout with Messi. Close enough to ache. Not close enough to win.
And the whole country turned out anyway.
There is a line in Zechariah, spoken to a demoralized handful rebuilding a temple that would embarrass anyone who remembered the old one, that asks who despises the day of small things. It is a question with an edge. The world despises small things constantly. It sorts nations by GDP and rankings, sorts people the same way, and files the little ones under "nice story" before moving on to the winners.
The prophet's answer is that the eyes running back and forth across the whole earth are not doing that math. They linger over the overlooked. While everyone else measured the skyline, those eyes were on the foundation.
The goalkeeper, Vozinha, is 40, and someone flew his mother across an ocean so she could finally watch him play. Fans leaned over the fences for autographs, and one of them said he had simply come to show gratitude. You can dignify a place by how you carry yourself in it. That is worth a runway full of flags, and it always was.