Batter Up!

It's spring or almost spring! That means May flowers, spring showers, and baseball among other signs of spring! That is especially true in Pittsburgh when the Pirates are really on their game!

One essential of playing baseball is the batter.  Without someone up at bat, there isn't much of a game. Actually there is NO game at all!

I'm not planning to play baseball any time soon, but I find myself up at bat all too often!  There are many variations on this theme: there are two kinds of people in this world - the batters/players and the bench warmers!  I don't care who you are or what you do; you are one or the other!

It's the people who aren't afraid to get in the game, to take their turn at bat, to play their position who make a difference in the game of life!

Once a lady in Pittsburgh (native Pittsburgher) said to me, O, I know all about you Southern girls!  You just take to your bed for three days when you get a little headache.  Now, mind you:  She hardly knew me and SHE CERTAINLY DID NOT KNOW ME!!! 

Well, after I picked my jaw up off the floor, I looked her straight in the eye and said, O, you must not know there is more than one kind of Southern gal - There's the Southern Belle and then there's the Steel Magnolia!!!

It is so interesting from a people-observation perspective and also so sad from a Christian world-and-life-view that there are actually Christians who find being a bench sitter good enough, thank you very much!  I don't think so!  The Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 3:17:  ¹⁷ And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.  My Jesus and His name deserve MUCH more than warming a bench!  ONLY my best will do, and that's my best in EVERYTHING!

Now, bench warming is much less risky!  Chances are that bench warming will net you FAR less criticism on a grand scale, but it also won't get you to 1st base!  It won't even get you up to bat!

I don't care where you live and walk; it's a choice: Batter Up! or warm the bench!  There isn't much wear and tear to bench warming.  Batting, pitching, catching, running the bases and the field cost: time and energy and can tug on your heart big time! BUT that's where the game of life is played - IN THE GAME - NOT on the bench!  Being a player participating in the game may be messy and challenging, but it's worth it every time!  Especially because that's the ONLY way to do EVERYTHING in the name of the Lord Jesus to hold Him up before the watching world! Just sayin'!

Being the Best!

I had never read this speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just six months prior to his death until I saw it posted on Katie Weatherbee's blog, Around Here. It pretty much sizes up what I think and live by as far as doing any job I am given to do. It expresses my paradigm for living my life along with the verse that follows.

Dr. King's words strike a strong cord in my heart! They are almost exactly what I would say if I were able to say it as eloquently:

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill. Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star.For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

Another great man wrote similar words long before Dr. King:

And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. (Col. 3:17)

These are wise words to live by! This is a high bar for a standard of living whether others see, appreciate or understand! Ultimately I'm not doing what I do for the approval of others anyway!