The Yard
Song of the Week: Malibu by Mumford and Sons (2025)
Book of the Week: No reading this week :)
Hello again. Baseball (for real) is back, and that’s big for me. I grew up a baseball fan, I played baseball until I graduated high school, some of my favorite memories are at baseball games, and my favorite team won a championship last year. Cloud 9! If you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering what I’m doing here - well, at the risk of being a little borderline heretical, I’m going to parallel baseball to the life of a disciple of Jesus.
Parallel #1: Failure / Falling Short
If you follow Jesus for more than ten seconds, you’ll realize it’s really hard. It is for all of us. First of all, there’s an impossibly high standard of righteousness that we’ve been called to - perfection is no easy task. But even in light of grace, we are still often not very good at ordering our lives around the preaching and practices of the God of the universe. Paul struggled with this mightily. I’m reminded of him calling himself the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1) or when he said “when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand” (Romans 7). We accept that we constantly fall short, and with so many emotions embrace grace. While there is hardly any way to quantify the scope of our failings, the parallel to the diamond is that the best baseball players fail 7 out of 10 times at the plate. Get 3 hits every 10 at bats over a long career and you’ll likely find yourself in the hall of fame. Beyond that, the scope of theoretical wins or losses in a season could be boiled down to a three game series: win 1 out of 3, and you’re one of the worst teams in the league, but win 2 out of 3, and you’re one of the best teams in the league. A one game shift over the course of three makes a huge difference because the best a team can hope for is about 2 wins out of a possible 3 - perfection unattainable.
Parallel #2: Our Daily Grind
Say you’ve moved past your first ten seconds after realizing Jesus is King and you’ve walked the path for a while. You’ll notice, it’s a daily grind. The prince of the power of the air doesn’t take time off and he works hard. God works harder, but still allows the little guy to run around and it makes for a need for watchfulness and training. As Paul says he doesn’t box like a boxer beating the air - he disciplines his body and maintains self-control lest he be disqualified (1 Corinthians 9), then at the end of his ministry refers to his walk as fighting the good fight and finishing the race (2 Timothy 4). Baseball is a daily grind - it’s one of the only major sports where games happen almost every day, and a season is 162 games long. Barry Bonds, the best hitter of all time, had almost 10,000 at bats - if you sign up for baseball, or to follow Jesus, be ready for the grind.
Parallel #3: The Adventure of a Lifetime
You may not agree with me, but baseball is fun. Super fun. And, it gets more fun the more you understand it. The same is true for faith - what a ride it is to finally connect with God and to see the world in full color. While life doesn’t all of the sudden get easy, hope and purpose flood the everyday and it makes the grind an adventure. If you’re not the least bit joyful about the work of the risen Lord, I invite you to plug back in.
Happy Opening Week!
In Love,
Josh
