A couple of years ago, I was coaching our daughter’s softball team during the end-of-season playoffs. Our girls were playing their hearts out: girls who normally couldn’t connect with a pitch were getting hits, and the fielding was absolutely amazing for the age group. It looked as though we had an easy path to having our names in the win column when, suddenly, it felt as though the umpire had put on a pair of blinders. Over the course of twenty minutes or so that umpire made a series of calls that resulted in our team losing the game by a run. Our girls were heartbroken. The season ended with a loss by bad umpiring.
After the game, we were giving the girls the postgame talk, and the other coach and I simply talked about what a wonderful season we’d all had and how hard the girls had played. We never once mentioned the umpire. It was our decision to focus on the positives, to not allow our frustrations with something that was outside of our control to enter into the minds of these seven- and eight-year-old girls and forever shade their views of how a game should be played. I can still recount each one of the calls that resulted in the loss, but I’m hoping that at this point none of those girls can!
The other coach and I never argued with the umpire (though we did grouse about him out of earshot of the team later); we instead simply helped the girls to play the game to the best of their abilities.
Over the course of the past year, we have been trying to give all of Peachtree Church the tools to play the game of living a life for Christ to the best of all of our abilities. We’ve examined the tools of prayer, of studying Scripture, of fasting, of serving, of giving, and many, many more. These tools are also the ones that allow us to be able to go through the moments when we see that the world is not functioning in the ways that we would prefer, and to avoid falling prey to the wiles of that world.
Paul wrote to the Romans “to not be conformed to the pattern of this world.” The pattern of the world during that softball game would have been for me to argue with the umpire, to yell and scream, to generally act in a manner that would have shown my personal life not to be in keeping with the ideals to which I try to hold myself as a follower of Christ and as your pastor. The pattern of this world is the challenge that we each face day in and day out.
Rather, we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, which truly means that we use these tools that we have examined over the past year to live in a way that shines the light of Christ on the world. That is not easy to do in the moments when we want to follow the pattern of this world, when we want to give in to the urge to live as everyone else does.
But we should not do so. We can pray for calmness in our hearts. We can listen in silence for the still, soft voice of God. We can fast from those things that we are prone to let stand in the place of the Lord. We can give of our time, our talents, and our treasures as an act of worship. We simply need to know how to make all of these different tools work together to form a game plan by which we can live our lives.