Batter Up!

My favorite baseball player has only been my favorite for about half the season, and even before that I’ve never heard of him. What may be surprising is that he is not on my favorite team (but when he’sa free agent the Sox should get him). The guy I’m talking about is Josh Hamilton from the Texas Rangers. Before the past few years Josh Hamilton was stuck in a rut, he was addicted to drugs and very far from God. He was suspended from baseball and from where he was it looked like he had nowhere to go. And now he finished his second major league season with 130 RBI’s, and he’s closer to God than ever. Why am I writing about Josh Hamilton? Because not only is a great baseball player, but also a picture of God’s grace. Before Josh Hamilton was nothing, and then he accepted Jesus, and his life is not only restored but better off that it was back when he was in the minors getting ready for his first major league season (and he broke a record hitting 28 homeruns in the first roun dof the 2008 homerun derby). Before we accept Christ in our lives we don’t have much, and we don’t deserve much either. There is no way we can talk, buy, or work our way into Heaven, the Bible says the wages of sin is death, but then something amazing happened, Jesus came down to become our way into Heaven. We did nothing to deserve it; we didn’t do anything to get God to give us this gift He gave it out of His love for us. “For God so loved the world that He gave is one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” John 3: 16.