Keep Your Eye on the Ball!

I was 8 years old and I suddenly found the weight of the world on my shoulders. The bases were loaded with two outs and I was the batter, facing a 10 year old pitcher that had struck me out every time I’d batted against him. I’d hit 34 home runs the year before in the 6 and 7 year old Midget League, but when facing the 10 year old pitchers, I was pretty mediocre. My brother was yelling at me to not strike out "again," while my mother was rooting me on from her lawn chair directly behind home plate. The self-perceived huge crowd was on the edge of their seats. I tell you, Mickey Mantle never faced the pressure in Yankee Stadium that I felt that day dragging my bat to the plate. Then above all the commotion going on inside and outside my head, I heard the voice of my father coming from the third base coach’s box, telling me to do something that I’d been told to do since I was old enough to pick up a ball bat. "Keep your eye on the ball," he instructed, and right then and there it dawned on me. I’d forgotten that simple concept. I’d been swinging and hoping the bat would somehow make contact with the ball. Thus, I’d been striking out regularly all year. "Keep your eye on the ball." Baseball at its very core! But when forgotten, or ignored, the results can be futile.

Christianity is like that. Sometimes we forget what we’re really here for or who we’re really serving. I heard a speaker once say that the "work of the church around me began to kill the work of God within me." Sometimes we can become so busy we forget the Christian basics. Things like the pure wonderment of John 3:16:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

It’s easy to lose focus on how amazing God’s love for us is because we tend to humanize God, limiting Him, by seeing Him with our capabilities, not His. Like Job states in Job 42: 1-5, we can sometimes lose focus on who exactly God is:
1 Then Job replied to the LORD: 2 "I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 3 You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. 4 "You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.' 5 My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you."

Job had to come to that realization that we all sometimes have to: You’re God and I’m not. I oftentimes find myself needing to step back and let God. Let God work, let God lead, let God use me in His way. Let God.

That’s Christianity at its very core. When we forget or ignore these concepts though, we can swing and miss in our worship, and on our real purpose in life, to share Jesus with the world around us. Staying focused gives our lives "grand slam" meaning...even bigger than the grand slam I hit that memorable day.