Play Ball!

I’ve never been the world’s best athlete. Some people run like the wind; I run like a turtle with hamstring issues. Some people can jump over tall buildings in a single bound (I might have stolen that line from somewhere); I struggle to jump up onto a street curb to get out of the way of a car. Some people—ahh, you get the idea. But my relative lack of physical prowess hasn’t kept me from at least trying to play a few sports on occasion. My first love was baseball, and I used to spend hours pretending I was pitching in the World Series, throwing my tennis ball against the side of my apartment building (until my neighbor came out and told me to knock it off. In high school, I took up basketball and started playing flag football. It was an intramural flag football game where my inadequacies as an athlete were most clearly revealed.

I was playing defense, the flag football equivalent of right field in baseball—the place where they stuck all the “spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” type of players. I would gaze wistfully from the sideline when my team had the ball, wishing I could be out there running with the ball. In my mind I’ve always run much faster and more gracefully than I do in real life. In truth, in my mind I’ve lived much more gracefully than I do in real life. Some of you may be able to identify with that. In this particular game, I finally got my chance to run with the ball, quite by accident, and, well, I made a mess of things.

The quarterback from the other team either didn’t see me or, more likely, didn’t consider me much of a threat, and he threw the ball to a receiver in my general area of the field. Well, actually, he threw the ball to me. And I caught it! Having caught the ball, I did what one is supposed to do when one has possession of the ball: I ran! Like the wind! Well, like a soft breeze. A lumbering, herky-jerky, soft breeze. A teammate came running up beside me and yelled for me to give him the ball. Since he was faster than me, and I was basically a wuss, I agreeably handed the ball over thinking (I really was thinking this) that he was faster and so he would be more likely to score our team a touchdown. I felt good about my selfless, team-centered, play.

Except . . . he wasn’t my teammate. Caught up in the excitement and confusion of the interception, and the rush and thrill of trying to run for a touchdown, I’d made a stupid decision and simply handed the ball back over to the other team. That decision caused a great deal of joy and merriment from the other members of the other team, a great deal of consternation and condemnation from my own team, and a large measure of shame in me. It reinforced all of the things I thought to be true about myself and my general worth athletically. All these years later, I still remember that play vividly. Although the shame and embarrassment from that particular incident has faded, there have been many other failures along the way to keep the fires of personal doubt and insecurity alive.

No doubt, you have your own feelings of inadequacy, and if you do, you have some idea of how debilitating they can be. We all have an enemy running alongside us playing on our confusion and self-doubt to encourage us to give up the ball, give up the dream, give up the hope that was placed inside us by grace. We all have that voice inside us reminding us over and over how often and how terribly we have failed. We have all suffered the shame of letting our loved ones and ourselves down, time and again, and it may be you have chosen not to play anymore, just to avoid that pain.

If so, I’ve got a word for you. God still wants you on his team. He told me so. No, not like that, but in scripture. The Bible says, despite your failings and weaknesses, despite your poor performance in the field, God has purchased your contract (1 Corinthians 6:20), and you are on his team because he wants you to play for him! And not only that, but he has more in mind for you than just defense or right field. He wants you to go on offense, to carry the ball for his team (Matt. 28:19).

I’m really not a great athlete; I’m not a great spiritual performer, either. But I am on the team, nd I do have a role. Just like you. So . . . Play Ball!