Lessons Learned From Baseball

I played in the annual “100 Inning Baseball Game” on Saturday. By a miracle I made it through 37 innings in 10 hours. The breakdown was 20 innings split between RF and CF, 12 innings behind the plate, and I finished the final 5 innings as a DH. I forget what inning it was, it must have been the 28^th or 29^th, either way I had been catching for a while and was exhausted. The most I had ever caught before was 3 innings, so 12 were very taxing on my body. In my previous at bat I struck out on three pitiful swings and was up at bat again, even more tired. We were stuck at 26 runs for a while and the other team was catching up. Basically, we needed a hit desperately. The pitcher threw a first pitch fastball, which I swung at with all my might and hit it deep, far, and foul down the right field line. Next pitch was a ball, and then he threw me a pitch low and outside. I swung my bat out as hard as I could and to my surprise squared up enough to hit a hot grounder up the middle for a single! Once on base there were a couple quick outs to which I responded with 2 barely stolen bases, finally scoring from 3^rd. By no means was I a hero. I didn’t hit a homerun; I barely squeaked a single up the middle. But I mustered the little strength I had and gave it my best in that last swing. Often in life it can feel that way. We can feel like we have no strength to carry on, that what we really want to do is take a break, but here’s the thing: life doesn’t stop for us, the game still has to be played. So what do we do? Well we can give up but then we let ourselves down. Or instead we can accept God’s grace and strength in our lives and succeed. Before my at bat I said “Look, right now I’m just a catcher, I’m not gonna get a hit.” Here’s the thing, God doesn’t give up on us, instead He carries us through. In life the last thing I want to see is another hurdle to jump, but I don’t have to jump it alone, more often than not God gives me a boost over to help me keep going and finish the race. You may feel that your energy is spent and that the mountain is too big to climb. Well you’re forgetting that you’ve got an entire energy reserve in God’s grace and love, that God can carry us through out trials to the other side. Even when the situation seems impossible, whether it be as basic as getting a hit after playing 28 exhausting innings or something as major as anything life throws at us, we’ve always got God on our side to back us up no matter what.