Dreams That Come True and Dreams That Don't

That's me at 12 years old in my Myers' Food Rite, number 12 uniform. I was proud to have this picture taken. I'll never forget walking down the street of my hometown in my first opening day parade either. I felt like I had reached the pinnacle of 12 year old success.

I had dreams of being a good or even great baseball player. Just once I wanted to hit a "walk-off" homerun or strike out the other team's best hitter to end the game. Unfortunately, I did neither of these fantastic feats.

I also had dreams for the pro teams I rooted for. In 1978, I wanted the Red Sox to beat the Yankees in the one game playoff. They didn't. In 1986, I wanted the Red Sox to beat the Mets in the World Series. They didn't. I wanted the Red Sox to beat the Yankees in the 2003 ALCS. They didn't. I wanted the Dodgers to beat the Yankees in the World Series of 1977 and 1978. They didn't. (Is there a reason I always pick teams who struggle with the Yankees? There might be, but I'm not sure if I want to know what it is). But in1981, the Dodgers did beat the Yankees in the World Series and then, finally, 23 YEARS LATER, the Red Sox did beat the Yankees and went on to beat the Cardinals in the 2004 World Series.

Funny thing is, it didn't make much of a difference in my life. Oh sure, it was fun rooting for them and watching them jump all over each other after they won. But I got up the next morning as the same personas the day before. I had a good life with my family and my friends before and after the Red Sox won the World Series.

I think I'm learning a lesson now. I'm learning to have dreams that change my life by making it better. I've discovered that Jesus really meant it when He said, "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full." I have discovered that learning to live in Jesus' kingdom is the good life. I am learning that being good and doing good like Jesus is the most beautiful way to live. My dream now is to learn to live more and more faithfully with Jesus as my king and with a longing for His kingdom to come in its fullness.

This is a dream that makes my life better and even more joyfully, makes the lives of those around me better. This is the dream I want to come true. This is the dream I know will come true.

"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!”

Peanuts and Ice Cold Drinks

What would a baseball game be without the shouts of "Get yur peanuts here!", or "Ice cold drinks, right here!"? Quickly you get the attention of the vendor at the other end of your row. Then you pass your $20.00 bill through the hands of 10 strangers and miraculously receive the right change. If you're lucky, the vendor will toss your bag of peanuts behind his back to add his own special little flare.

To me there is a big difference between the vendor who just hands you the bag of peanuts and the guy who does it with style. I'll take the guy with style any day.

And that reminds me that happiness in life isn't so much about what you do, but how you do it. I've been on this planet for 41 years and I've seen people love the same jobs that other people hate. While there's truth to the idea that each of us are wired for certain kinds of work and we will be happier if we work in that special area, it's far more important to do what you do with the special touch only you can give.

The Apostle Paul wrote "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." When we do whatever we do with all our heart and with our own special touch, we reflect the glory and creativity of God. So go ahead and be who you were created to be. Have fun in whatever you do. Be thankful for the way God made you and display His image stamped on you. Don't worry about what others think. Remember how is more important than what. You can always find someone who can do WHAT you do but you'll never find anyone who can do it HOW you do it.

Do a Little Dance

What do baseball and dancing have in common? Apparently, a whole lot if you are a member of the Seattle Mariners grounds crew.

I'm always excited to visit a new ballpark, whether it's major leagues or minor leagues. Every park has its own atmophere and some have their special ballpark food. I was a little surprised by the "little extra" at Safeco Field in Seattle. After the third inning the grounds crew came out to touch up the infield. Then the music started (sorry, can't remember the song, some 50's song I think) and before I knew it the whole crew was doing a dance routine. What a trip!

I think I can learn a lesson from the Mariners' ground crew. I need to break up the normal routine of life with a little dancing now and then. After all, the Bible teaches us to praise God with dancing. Don't be afraid, you won't catch me doing this in public! Public displays of rhythm are not my specialty. If I can clap in time during worship at church, that's an achievement. Instead, I'll just grab one of my kids or my wife and sing and dance along with a crazy song or some upbeat worship song. Sometimes a little dance can bring up the joy that has been buried in our hearts by the weights and cares of life and let it soar again.

Missed it by that much...

When I was a kid I used to love to watch "Get Smart", the secret agent series with Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, the Barney Fife of the spy world. It was "Chaos" (the bad guys) versus Control (the good guys) but it always seemed that Control was the organization that was in chaos. I'll never forget Smart's shoe phone or "the cone of silence". One of Smart's favorite things to say was "Missed it by that much." He would hold his index finger and thumb really close together and then say this phrase whenever he almost caught the criminal.
When we visited Seattle on our recent trip out west, we attended a Seattle Mariners / Colorado Rockies game at beautiful Safeco Field. It turned out to be a "missed it by that much" kind of game for the Mariners. The game was close the whole way and then went into extra innings. In the 11th inning, the Rockies scored two runs to take the lead. In the bottom of the 11th inning, the most popular Mariners player, Ichiro, hit a home run to make it a 4-3 game. The next player after him made the the second out. The next player got a hit which gave the Mariners on person on base with their cleanup hitter, Raul Ibanez" up to bat. Ibanez came oh so close to hitting a walkoff homerun, but the Rockies' centerfielder caught his hit on the warning track.
Game over. "Missed it by that much." The gap between winning and losing for the Mariners was about 10 feet. Raul Ibanez hit the ball 390 feet, but he needed to hit 400 feet.
The Bible teaches that there is a much bigger gap between God and man. The gap is caused by man's lack of trust in God and the sin that is the result of that lack of trust. This gap is much bigger than the gap at Safeco Field that afternoon.
The good news is that the essence of the Gospel is that Jesus came to bridge the gap between us and our Heavenly Father. 1 Timothy 2:5,6 says, "There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus who gave Himself as a ransom for all men." No one is good enough to bridge this gap on their own. No one is perfect like God, but Jesus built a bridge across the gap with His cross.
The cross is everything. We need it to begin as a follower of Christ, because we need the forgiveness of the cross to have a relationship with God. We need it every day because our hearts by nature do not trust God. We constantly need the cleansing power of the cross to help us move ahead in trusting God. The only way to enjoy a relationship with God is by daily embracing teh cross of Christ.
Don't live a "missed it by that much" kind of life. Every daym, humbly admit the gap between your goodness and God's goodness. Enbrace the cross and with deep-hearted gratitude, enjoy Christ's rich life.

The Final Score

Yes, sports and games are supposed to be fun, but let's set aside all this nonsense about winning doesn't matter. I always tell the kids on my little league teams that we have three goals: to learn; to have fun; to win. Winning is not the only goal in sports but it is an important one.

If you took a survey of Major League Baseball players and asked them if they would play for less money if the team they committted to was guaranteed to win the World Series, I believe a healthy majority would say yes. Just ask Alex Rodriguez of the evil empire (sorry, Yankee fans) what his opinion is on the question. 2 years ago he was ready to agree to a trade from the Texas Rangers to the Boston Red Sox. The players' union ended up blocking the trade because it would have reduced his salary. Fast forward to the end of the 2004 season and look at his face as the Red Sox celebrated their victory over the Yankees in the American League Championship Series. The disappointment was written deep on his face. In the end, he didn't care about his final stats or his bank balance, he only cared that the final score showed his team didn't win the World Series.

The good news of the Kingdom of Christ is we already know the final score. Jesus wins! So it only makes sense to play every inning of our lives for Christ. It doesn't matter what personal accomplishments we achieve or how much money or stuff we accumulate, it only matters that we contributed to the winning team.

There is no better feeling in sports than the on the field celebration right after the championship has been won and knowing you helped make it happen. I want that experience when the final score of life is displayed on the scoreboard of the universe. I won't care about anything except knowing I was a contributing member of the winning team and I'll be lining up to praise our captain and King! We know the final score, so let's get in the game!

The Dugout

The dugout. Every baseball player spends half or more of his time there. When I was 12 years old, I spent the least amount of time possible there. I was the starting third baseman for the Myers Food Rite Majors team.

I was always a good fielder, but my lack of hitting caught up with me in teener baseball. Let's just say I saw and felt the bench in the dugout siginifcantly more than half the time. I think it may also have had something to do with the fact that I was assigned the same position as the coach's son...hmmmmm.

I didn't have a growth spurt until after I was 16, so I ended up having a similar bench experience, minus the coach's son, in 8th and 9th grade basketball. Some would say being 5'2" is a slight disadvantage in a sport for tall people. I would have to agree, especially when your leaping ability cannot be compared to Superman. No single bounds over tall buildings for me. It ain't gonna happen!

So since I have significant bench experience (every now and then I still find a splinter from 1979), I think I am qualified to pass on one lesson I learned on the pine. Here it is.

Every player on the team is important, no matter what position he or she plays and no matter if they are on the field or in the dugout.

In my playing days, I spent too much time complaining about not playing enough and not enough time encouraging my teammates. Looking back, I probably would have gotten more playing time if I had stayed more positive, but somehow I thought that baseball was all about me. It was as if I thought the game wasn't worth playing unless I was on the field.

Some people seem to have the same perspective about church. They want "the game" to be "played" their way and if it's not, they go find another "team". But I have found that if you start encouraging others on your team and start focusing on what your team is doing right, you will complain less and even end up becoming a MVCM, Most Valuable Church Member. Those that sit on the bench (read pew or folding chair or padded chair, whichever your church has) and complain about those in the game, hurt Jesus' team. But those that choose to look past the faults and weaknesses of the team (since every team/church has those) end up getting involved in a way that makes the team and themselves stronger.

Don't be a dugout complainer. Remember that your team needs you. Every bench sitter out there may have to wait for the coach's word to get in a baseball or basketball game, but bench sitters in Christ's church are only there because they choose to be. Christ's church is the most important cause in the world and every follower needs to choose to get in the game by serving with the gifts and talents and passions God gave them. It's how you show you have authentic trust in Christ. You can start serving right where you are by meeting the needs of people around you. Go ahead and get in the game. Jesus can make you an All-Star and you'll discover that giving and serving are the keys to a fulfilling life.

No minor leagues with Jesus

I went with my little league baseball team to see a Harrisburg Senators game this week. The Senators are the double "A" farm team for the Washington Nationals (which sounds a whole lot better than the Montreal Expos, the previous Major League team of the Senators). Our team went to the game because we won the fundraising contest for our league. One of the high points for our players was going out on the field to stand with the player of their choice during the National Anthem. My son, on the left, and another player chose the centerfielder, Frank Diaz.

Minor League baseball is fun and in some ways, I like it better than the Majors. More players play with their whole heart because they're hoping to get to the Majors and they know it won't be easy. They long for the day the manager calls them into the office to tell them some good news, like Dennis Quaid's coach in "The Rookie" (a great feel-good baseball movie). They want to hear the manager say, "Son, you're moving up to the Big Leagues."

The encouraging news is that there are no minor leaguers with Jesus. He gives every one of His followers gifts that we can begin to use in the big game of life right from day 1. Certainly we can improve "our game" and grow in maturity, but we don't have to wait for the call up from the big leagues. If you are a follower of Christ right now, you are in the big leagues and you make a contribution to Jesus' team every time you give like Jesus gives. We strike out when we live selfishly and get on base when we serve others like He did. Don't sit on the bench. There is room in this game for everyone! Do everything you do with Jesus at the center.

***If you want a little inspiration to swing for the fence with Jesus, trying listening to the song "Home Run" by Geoff Moore.