Close To My Heart

Former major league baseball player, Al Gallagher, once said: “There are three things in my life which I really love: God, family, and baseball. The only problem is, once baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit.”  While I hope that is not entirely correct, it is not far from the truth for me as well. I absolutely love the game of baseball. I love playing the game, watching the game, analyzing the game, talking about the game, reading about the game…I think you get the idea.

One of the reasons I love baseball so much is because it teaches a great deal about life itself. Baseball shows the value of individual contributions to a team’s success, the importance of a good work ethic (you play like you practice), and the inevitably of failure (even Hall of Fame hitters make an out 70% of the time).  At the same time, baseball always affords its participants a chance to bounce back. At best, there’s another at bat coming. At worst, wait ‘til next year!

Some of you may recall a routine made famous by stand-up comedian, George Carlin, a number of years ago. In it, he compares the two most popular sports in America (no, not NASCAR and fishin’) – baseball and football. From his observations, you may get an idea why baseball is our national pastime and my sport of choice.

• Football begins in the fall, when everything’s dying.
• Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
  

• Football is concerned with downs. What down is it? It’s the last down!
• Baseball is concerned with ups. Who’s up? Oh, I’m up!
  

• In football you receive a penalty.
• In baseball you make an error…oops!
  

• In football the specialist comes in to kick something.
• In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

• Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, late hits, and unnecessary roughness.
• Baseball has the sacrifice.

• Football has the two minute warning.
• Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.
• Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we’ve got to go to sudden death.
• Baseball has no time limit so we don’t know when the game is gonna end. We might even have extra innings.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

• In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy’s defensive line.
• In baseball the object is to get home! And to be safe! I hope I’ll be safe at home!  
  

Baseball lover or not, we all like to be safe at home. Maybe that’s why I love Christ’s Church even more than the game of baseball. It gives me a safe place to call home where I can learn and live the Christian faith. That’s why I agree with the writer of Hebrews when he says, “Let us think about each other and help each other to show love and do good deeds. You should not stay away from church meetings…you should meet together and encourage each other.” (Hebrews 10:24-25a ICB) I hope and pray you have found and frequent a church that keeps you “safe at home!”

In my opening statement I would like to ask the following questions, could it be that the old is past and the new has arrived? Has the calendar itself, turned the page into the new millennium where it seems that nothing is wrong? Have we lost sight of the message of the cross and the price that Jesus paid for our sins? These are questions that I believe that need to be answered truthfully, through the word of God. Paul said that we the children of God should come out from among the world and be a separate people and touch not any unclean thing.

But in reality, it’s very hard to determine the difference between the world and the church today because of the lack of separation. And the reason is conviction. Knowing what to do, why to do it, and how to do it is worthless if you don’t have convictions. Jesus’ lived his life under total conviction doing the will of his father. He completely separated himself from the world. John said, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the father, but is of the world”.

When John makes reference to the word world, he’s not talking about the grass, the trees, the flowers, etc.… He’s talking about the world system that is under the complete control of Satan. When we as children of God excepted Jesus as our personal savior, according to the scripture, old things passed away and behold all things become new. What we once loved, we will now hate and what we once hated we will now love. There should be a difference in one’s life after excepting Jesus as their savior. Our talk should change, our walk should change, our actions should change, but sadly in today’s society you don’t see that change because we’ve lost our conviction.

Let me ask this question, if you can live any way you want, do anything you want, say anything you want and still be saved, then why did Jesus have to pay such an awful price at Calvary? The answer is, you can’t. There must be a separation from this world in the life of a child of God. You cannot mix the two together, a house divided cannot stand! Jesus said, you cannot put new wine in old vessels. So, let me encourage all of us today to stop, and take a good look at the church and ourselves and see if we measure up to the church that was in the book of Acts and see if the church is being added to daily, and if signs and wonders are following. Remember, Jesus is not coming back for anything less than he left.

Once some declared himself to be an atheist, I would probably try to engage him/her in a conversation to help me understand why he/she is an atheist. The conversation might go something like this:

“I am sure there is a reason you consider yourself to be an atheist. Would you mind sharing that with me? Following their answer I would ask another question.

“I consider you to be an intelligent person. Would you say that you know everything there is to know about the universe?” If they are honest, he/she will admit they do not know everything about this universe.

“Is it possible, then, that in the section you don’t know about the universe, there just might be God? If they don’t cut the discussion short at this point, I would continue.

“Since you don’t know everything that is in this universe, and if God might be in the section that you don’t know, then it seems to me that you really don’t know if there is a God or not. I think you would be classified as an agnostic rather than an atheist. An atheist states there is no God. An agnostic doesn’t know for sure.

If the person is willing to continue the conversation, I would suggest that since he/she really doesn’t know if there is a God or not, he/she should investigate the issue with those are convinced there is a God and ask why they believe the way they do.