By Gina Caswell Kelly
Paul liked sports analogies, and so do I. I watch a lot of baseball. People say it is a slow sport. Maybe it is. But I love the precision of the game. The math of it. Three strikes. Four balls. Three outs. Nine innings. It is a reasonably exact science. But life is not an exact science. We don’t always understand why things happen, and we are not meant to. If we did, our faith would not be necessary. And dependence on the Savior would not be needed.
One thing that separates baseball from other sports is that you have to keep playing. In basketball, you can stall the ball a bit. In football, you can take a knee. In baseball, you have to throw your best pitch on the very last strike for the very last out. You have to be ready to catch that fly ball. You can’t sit on a lead and just let the clock run out. This is how life is also. We have to keep battling and keep living until the very end. No matter what is going on around us, no matter how good or bad things might be in our life, we have to keep throwing our best pitch all the way through.
Our best pitch is only available when we have a life that is saturated with dependence on God and His plan. We can throw all we want to until we can’t throw anymore, but the only way to see real success in life is to throw the pitch that our Savior has planned for us. We have to use His game plan to see true success in our lives.
With God as our guide and Jesus as our Savior, we don’t just get three strikes and three outs. We have an endless amount of mistakes we can make. We can never be declared out until that final day if we have never given our heart to Him. God’s forgiveness ensures that. The Bible says in Micah 7: 19 that He will cast our sins into the depths of the sea, never to be remembered. There is not a box score, keeping track of our swings and misses, or our foul balls. They are forgiven and forgotten. No one is keeping stats on us. That last swing and miss, or that last foul ball is forgiven and will never be brought up again. Not by the Savior, anyway.
Jesus is the ultimate umpire calling the game, not with justice, but with mercy and grace. He wants us to round the bases. He wants us to reach home. He waits to receive us there. That is His ultimate goal for each of us. He does not send anyone to hell. Our choice to not receive His free gift of salvation is what sends us there. Oh choose salvation today!! Don’t try to round the bases without Him!
Oh my goodness! What a time it will be when we finally make it home and look into the face of the Savior and get see Jesus declaring us safe at home plate. It is His game plan that makes the difference!
