Tim Tebow has received a lot of press attention in his career, both for his performance on the field, and for his bold demonstration of his Christian faith. So much attention in fact, that some have tired of hearing about him to a degree. He seems to wear his faith on his sleeve, and more prominently, on the eye black stickers he wears under his eyes on game day.  On several occasions, the bible verses referenced on those stickers became the most searched terms on Google during nationally televised games.

Buried in this article about Florida’s lack of trophies at the ESPN College Football awards show is an amazing story. At an event the night before the awards show, Tebow met one of his biggest fans. A young lady whose life has been full of challenges, including a brain tumor and a condition that causes uncontrollable tremors, made a wish to come to Disney World to the ESPN College Football Awards. She came to the event in the hope that she might get a chance to meet Tim Tebow. She ended up getting more than she bargained for.

When Tebow met her and got to know her story, he invited her to be his guest to the awards show. She got to walk the red carpet with him.  If you visit the article and watch the embedded video, it will give a better perspective on just how remarkable this was. Tebow not only made this girl’s dream come true and more, but he did it in spite of how it might have reflected on him.

Just a few days later at the Heisman Trophy award ceremony in New York, Tebow was reported to have prayed with eventual winner Mark Ingram of Alabama before the ceremony to help Ingram deal with the pre-event anxiety. Tebow and the Florida Gators had just lost the SEC championship game to the Alabama team, a victory in which Mark Ingram was very instrumental. That game cost Tebow and the Gators a repeat visit to the BCS National Championship game. It’s no secret that losing that game was very hard for Tebow, yet he was able to lay all of that aside to reach out and help a fellow football player.

Some people might say that Tebow did all that for the positive attention, but when you look at it, the coverage of these stories was minimal. I’m not trying to put Tebow on a pedestal, but I believe his actions in both of these instances are indicative of his character, the same sort of character that many of us lack. The sort of character that puts others before ourselves.

Even though Tim Tebow is now making headlines for his involvement with a controversial anti-abortion Super Bowl advertisement financed by Focus on the Family, I still think that he has set a good example with his life. Even if your not a Tebow fan, you’ve at least got to respect that.

I wonder how many opportunities to reach out to others that I’ve missed because I’ve been too concerned about myself.