09 August, 2016

"It Ain't Over Til It's Over!"

Last night our family went to see the Cardinals vs Reds game in Saint Louis. The Cardinals have really been playing some "life-less" baseball for the past week and I will admit that even getting ready to go to the game I was thinking how that if they played like they have been playing we were wasting an evening and money. True to form, the Cardinals continued playing some horrible baseball. They were facing a pitcher who was 0-6 on the year, but the Cards managed to make him look like a superstar as they could not group together any hits and left runners stranded on base again and again. Part of me wanted to get up and leave early because the game was boring and it looked like yet another humiliating defeat. We stayed for the entire game and went into the bottom of the ninth inning trailing 4-0.  They managed to get a runner on base and bunted him over but then quickly got another out. So, it's the bottom of the ninth, 2 outs and I'm thinking "let's just go!"  But we stayed. Suddenly the unimaginable happened. A walk, a batter hit by a pitch, a base hit and we are in a tied game, 4-4 and Yadi at the plate. I'm sitting there thinking they are going to break our hearts again with an "almost" comeback, when all of a sudden, Yadi is hit by a pitch and the winning run crosses the plate and the stadium went absolutely wild. And I thought, "Wow... I'm glad I was not one of the fans who quit and left early!"  And then the thought hit me...

Life is often so much like that game. We get into a rut where nothing seems to be going right and we feel like "why even bother?" Nothing is going the way it should go, it seems like things are working against us... and it all seems hopeless. Then suddenly, God shows up and through a miraculous series of unlikely, completely unforeseen events, we find ourselves standing there amazed and asking, "Did that really just happen?"  It did not happen the way we would plan it. The script was written in such a non-traditional way, yet at the end of the day, we are standing tall and victorious. That's my God. He does things in ways that we cannot boast in ourselves, our education or intelligence or abilities because it really had nothing to do with us and we are left standing there with our mouths hanging open as we acknowledge, "this shouldn't have happened... but it did."   

I want to encourage the reader today to hang in there and not give up... even if it seems absolutely hopeless. God's not finished yet, and as the great Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over til it's over!"

No comments: