Curve Ball

Let me take you back to those good days of playing out in the field with your friends, or at the Sunday School Trip, and the game of ‘rounders’ is in full swing. For our American cousins, ‘rounders’ is the same (almost) as softball, but with makeshift bat and ball, sweaters to mark the bases, for a lot of family fun, and played to the same rules (almost) as softball.

You have your sturdy homemade bat and are standing ready to get the first throw from the pitcher. You miss wildly (not an unusual occurrence when folks young and old play for fun and maybe one time in the year). Why should the batter miss a slowly lobbed ball, when he or she has a big bat at their disposal? There could be a couple of reasons.

Perhaps the pitcher is good, and throws a curve ball, against which you have no chance, and your team goes out one by one while this experienced pitcher is in control. Or maybe you are standing in the wrong place? Could it be that the pitcher is throwing an easy, true ball, towards the home base, but you are standing off to the side, and the catcher is clear to pick up easy points from all those misses?

The application to our Christian experience is clear. Let’s make sure we are in the right place to see and receive God’s true will and direction. If we miss out, it’s because we are out of line. After all, God is not in the business of throwing curve balls…. Ever!