Equating Baseball and Life

   I sat up last night and watched the end of a baseball game between the Braves and the Phillies. Now I am not a die hard baseball fan, but I was caught up in the drama of a team trying hard not to fold in the last game of the season. The Atlanta team had a huge lead in the wild card race when September began, but they had not come through in that month, had squandered that lead, and were literally one game away from not making the playoffs.

   Things looked good as Atlanta took a two run lead into the late innings, but the Phillies chipped away and tied the game in the ninth. Despite the Braves having chances to win in extra innings, the Philadelphia team won the game in the 13th, and, in baseball lore, this team will probably go down as losers because of the outcome. But are they really?

   What distinguishes winners from losers? In baseball, as in most games, it is the final score, and all of us try hard to be on the right side of that tally.

   My wife says that a Bowman trait is to do everything to win, everything legal that is. My retort is that there is no use in playing a game unless you are trying to win. In my mind, doing your best and trying to win, equate. Not winning per se, but doing my best, and making the effort to win, that is the important thing.

   So, how do I stretch a baseball analogy from last night's game into a blog on Oswald Chambers' writings?

   Paul, in the book of I Corinthians, states that he has a compunction to preach because that is what God has called him to do. He has to do it, and he has to do it to the best of his ability, regardless of the outcome. The score is not important, it is the doing what he is called to do, that matters.

   In baseball, as in life, it is the dedication to the task that is eternal, not the score of one particular game. Do I do my best in what God has called me to do?

   I think of one other baseball statistic: Growing up, we had a minor league team in our city and I went to a lot of games, even took my kids later on in life. The thought hit me one day, as I watched those men (boys) compete, that those guys had worked really hard and were very good baseball players, but they might never even reach the major leagues, let alone make the baseball headlines. Were they losers?

   Is a Christian worker, toiling in obscurity for a lifetime, a loser because no one knows his or her name?

   It is not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the game.

   God keeps a different scorecard.