Routines
Today as I arrived in the office, to my utter delight, I was greeted by four tickets to the Colorado Rockies, St. Louis Cardinals game on July 23rd. My Uncle Bobby, who pastors the Praise Assembly of God in Pueblo, Colorado, mailed them to me as a gift. Life doesn’t get much better than this! Just last week I was telling a friend that I wanted to go to a Rockies/Cardinals game during our vacation this year. He told me that he already tried to get tickets, but couldn’t because the games are sold out. Now I’ve got mine and I can’t wait to use them!
I love baseball.
I like to watch batting practice and the field crew manicuring the infield. I like hearing the vendors selling their wares, “Hot Dogs, get your Hot Dogs heeeeeere!” I love the pledge of allegiance at the beginning of the game and singing “Take me out to the Ball game” [at] the bottom of the seventh inning. And I even love watching the stands empty after a game.
Then there is the game itself. Baseball is the working man’s version of poetry. Everything is balanced. Nine players, nine innings. Three strikes, three outs. Four balls, four bases.
I understand that some of you don’t like the game. You say it is too slow and even [goes] so far as to call it boring. Don’t you see, that’s the beauty of the game. Baseball, like life, is filled with the routine, interrupted occasionally by the spectacular.
Though I love baseball, I can’t stand to watch baseball highlights on the news. There is no mystery to it. Every batter hits a home run and every fielder makes an unbelievable catch. When the spectacular becomes the [commonplace] it loses its appeal to me. Only in the context of routine plays and easy fly balls does the long ball over the fence grab my attention.
Most of my tomorrows are like most of my yesterdays. [Humdrum], routine grounders. But every now and then, something out of the ordinary happens (like receiving a thoughtful gift from an uncle) that makes my soul sing.
Wilson, Jim L. Fresh Start Devotionals. Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009. Print.
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