"Pick me up!"

Baseball can be the loneliest sport in the world. Good hitters spend time practicing every day. Good hitters come to the plate expecting to get a hit. But good hitters also know in the back of their minds, that even the best hitters only succeed thirty percent of the time. Getting a hit means everybody cheers your name. Not getting a hit means the fans of your team are mad at you and everyone else in the stadium is happy you failed. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

I think it’s because of this high rate of failure that the spoken phrase “pick me up” is part of baseball. After failing to get a hit, a player will say “Pick me up” to the next hitter. The idea is that if the guy after you gets a hit and drives in a run, the team is helped and it’s easier to forget about your failure. It’s a good reminder that baseball is a team sport, that winning is more important than an individual player’s statistics.

Maybe we all should make this phrase a part of our lives. It’s no secret that we live with failure. We seek to live like Jesus, but still wrestle with sin. We want to grow quickly as a follower of Christ, but the journey is much slower with much smaller steps than we would prefer. We want to be bold in sharing the good news, but we are often timid and the devil blinds our friends so “they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” While enduring this daily struggle, it becomes easy to hear enemy belittling us. It becomes easy to believe the lie that everyone else is a better follower of Christ than I am or has it easier than I do.

But the Kingdom of God, our team, is winning. True, we lose some battles, but we win many more. Maybe on my worst days, I should pick up the phone, call a friend and say, “Pick me up, tell me about one way you see God working in or around you right now.” Then both of us will be encouraged. I think the writer of Hebrews was familiar with the struggle of life and that’s why he chose to say, “Encourage one another – and all the more as you see the day approaching.” The end of the season is approaching and we will be champions celebrating in the clubhouse of heaven. That will be a beautiful day, but for now, “Pick me up!”