But this time, the knees athletes, coaches, and staff were taking on the football field were not about politics, race, equity, or injustice. The knees were about, dare I say, love. In world that’s gone crazy, what Americans witnessed on the field and off in Cincinnati was the country at its best. And sports at its best. The American spirit—and a bit of heaven brought down to earth—for all to witness.

It’s why so many of us love sports. We put aside our differences, the issues of the day, and the weight of the world and watch the best athletes in the world do things we mere mortals can only dream of. We don’t envy their paychecks. We don’t do a head count on the diversity front, wondering why there aren’t more Arabic or Asian or Italian players in the NFL. The players on the field represent the best of the best fighting it out for their teams. For their cities. For the sheer pleasure of engaging in a good, hard fight against a worthy adversary.

It is why so many Americans didn’t appreciate politics being injected into the sport they love so much the year before last. It’s one of the few places we can go to get away from politics. And come together and celebrate something we have in common: a love of the sport.

We all took a knee Monday night for Damar Hamlin because it is what we do. It’s what we do for each other, for neighbors, for strangers every day in this good and decent country—we pray for each other. We reach out and help each other, too, and volunteer our time and treasure. No country in the world is as generous as we are.

We took a knee because for so many of us—those of us who believe in God and are not merely “spiritual”—there is nothing like the power of prayer to change the world.

“The Lord is near to all who call on him,” reads Psalm 145:18. Many Americans believe those words, including many professional athletes and coaches.

On Monday night, it wasn’t just players on the field praying, but millions of Americans praying together for an athlete we didn’t know. We didn’t ask about his skin color. Or his net worth. Or his annual salary. Or his gender status. Or his religious affiliation.

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others watching the game prayed for Hamlin. It is how we are hard-wired. Many of us believe it is how God hard-wired us.

America took a knee for Hamlin last night because it isn’t just what we do: it’s who we are. And we are still thinking about him and praying for him each day.

It was a tough hit, the hit Hamlin delivered to his opponent last night. The kind fans take for granted in a sport Americans love more than any other, for so many reasons—including the great tackles.

In football, it’s the person who gets hit that is most often harmed. It’s the wide receiver who gets hurt by the defensive safety. This time, it was the defensive safety who got hurt. Watching Hamlin get up so quickly after the collision, and nearly as quickly collapse, took our breath away. A jam-packed Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati—65,000 fans—fell silent as quickly as Hamlin fell to the ground. And stayed silent as an empty church.

For what seemed like an eternity, Bills staff and medics worked on Hamlin. He didn’t move. And when he did, it was into an ambulance, which arrived on the field to usher Hamlin to a local hospital. We learned that Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest, and is in critical condition. His life was saved by trained medical professionals who knew what to do, and worked fast. In another era, Hamlin would have died on the spot.

Then something more startling happened. In show business and sports, the mantra has always been, “the show must go on!” In a breach of protocol and tradition, two NFL teams offered a startling rebuttal. “The show must not go on,” they replied. The teams agreed to suspend the game indefinitely.

America will come to know the life story of Hamlin. He grew up in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, a town of 6,000 near Pittsburgh. Nearly 25 percent of the town’s population, and 40 percent of its children, live below the poverty line. “As a young man, [Hamlin] saw the worst things in life as he lost three of his close friends to bullets, senseless deaths that the police never solved. And in his own home, his father, Mario—trying to make ends meet for his wife Nina and Damar—turned to selling drugs,” wrote Sal Maiorana in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

That choice of Hamlin’s father led to a three-and-a-half-year stint in prison, leaving his wife and son to take care of themselves. But Hamlin credits his father and mother for teaching him right from wrong, helping navigate the gangs and drug trade and ultimately earning a football scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Just that fact of having two parents in my life that were dedicated to me and all into me, every move from being little to growing up,” Hamlin said to an interviewer last year, noted Maiorana. “I could have steered left or steered right but my parents were always there to straighten me out and get me back on the track.”

When he became an NFL player, Hamlin started a foundation to help kids in need. “As I embark on my journey to the NFL, I will never forget where I come from and I am committed to using my platform to positively impact the community that raised me,” he wrote on the foundation’s website. In the past day, Americans sent millions of dollars to Hamlin’s foundation.

“See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this,” wrote the prophet Isaiah about how God uses suffering to shape us into better versions of ourselves.

For believers across America praying for Hamlin and his family, those words are as meaningful today as when they were written.

Lee Habeeb is vice president of content for Salem Radio Network and host of Our American Stories. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, Valerie, and his daughter, Reagan.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.