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Baseball and softball season are upon us! Get every young person able to play signed up quickly so they can enjoy the greatest game ever played. The life lessons taught in these sports are amazing. Lessons of teamwork in how you can have a team full of Allstars, but if they don’t click and play as a team then they will never be truly successful. The lessons of never giving up no matter the score as the game ain’t over until the final out is called (just ask the 12 run deficit comebacks from the Indians in 2001 over the Mariners or the 1911 Tigers who came back to beat the White sox). The lessons of cheaters never truly win and will eventually get caught. How it is ok to strike out…just go down swinging. Or the greatest life lesson in how you leave it all on the field where you place all your energy so that when the game is over you gave it your all.

I like how the Psalmist declares in Psalm 96:12 “Let the field be joyful and all that is in it”. While this isn’t necessarily talking about baseball…it is talking about life. These fields need to be joy filled with fun and growth. We aren’t raising professional athletes. We ARE, however, raising and training young men and women who will grow to be something other than athletes most likely. “Hammerin’ Harmon” “The Killer” Killebrew, Jr. was an infielder in major league baseball from 1954 – 1975. No other player hit more home runs in the 1960’s than “The Killer’s” 393. He ended his career with a batting average of .256, 2,086 hits, 1,584 RBI’s and is currently 12th in all time home runs with 573 (4th place when he retired in ’75). Killebrew stated, “My father used to play with me and my brother in the yard. Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys.’” Folks, this spring and summer, tons of young folks will run onto a field to play the greatest game. They may be horrible at it…but they are still there. Go support them. Cheer them. Train them. They ain’t pro’s so remember how none of them are getting paid and there is no money on the line. Let them see how to behave and act/react by your actions. Go volunteer, making a difference by being the good these youngin’s need. You may be exactly what they need to have in their life right now. As the psalmist declared, let our fields be joyful. Go be the good needed.

 

Rev. J. Cameron Bailey is pastor of Kenbridge Christian Church. He can be reached at jamescameronbailey@gmail.com