Central Abbotsford

This week, I went to a minor league baseball game in Vancouver. For those not familiar, the Vancouver Canadians are a team at the third tier of the minor leagues affiliated with the Toronto Blue Jays. At this level of baseball, the rosters are mostly recently-drafted players in their early 20s. Even though only a small handful of them will ever end up cracking the major leagues, they still represent the top 1% of the top 1% of baseball players in the world. These guys are very good! And yet…

When we got to the bottom of the seventh inning, it was still a close game, with the home team up over visiting Spokane by two runs. The inning started innocently enough, with the leadoff batter getting a single, and then the next batter popping up. After that, though, something strange happened. Spokane’s pitchers seemed to forget how to throw a pitch properly.

First, the pitcher walked a batter. Not great, but it happens sometimes. Then Vancouver got a hit to load the bases. Then, it just got silly. The pitcher walked the next batter, allowing a run to score. He walked the next batter on four straight bad pitches, scoring another run. They changed pitchers. The new pitcher came in and threw four straight balls, walking in another run. The next batter came up and the first two pitches were also balls, meaning that two professional baseball pitchers had just combined to throw eleven straight balls to Vancouver batters. When he did finally throw a strike on the following pitch, the crowd erupted in a sarcastic cheer! No worries, though, because he threw two more balls, walking in a third straight run.

Finally, something different happened! The pitcher got the next batter to ground out, but another run scored on the play. This meant that one of the bases was empty, which did not last for long, because the pitcher walked the next batter to fill that base back up. He then walked another batter to score the fifth run of the inning, four of which were freely given up via walks. After what seemed like an eternity, the eleventh batter popped out (for his second time in the inning) to mercifully bring it to a close. Total damage: six walks leading to five runs for Vancouver, even though they only needed to actually hit the ball twice. A close game was now effectively over; indeed, neither team scored a run for the rest of the game and Vancouver won 8-1.

Why give the play-by-play of a baseball game? Remember what I said at the beginning – these guys are among the best baseball players in the world. They have been training and competing their whole lives for this point. They are trying as hard as they can, because they are all acutely aware that the way you rise the ranks is by performing well. And yet, at that moment, the high-level athletes that were Spokane’s pitching staff could not do anything right.

Perhaps you have had a day like this lately in your walk of faith. Perhaps it’s been more than a day – maybe you’ve been in a stretch of time where you know that you’ve not been living faithfully to the call of obedience that God has called you to. Sure, you’re not in the “big leagues”, so to speak, but you’ve been a Christian for a long time and you know (in your head, at least) what it means to live a life honouring to God, but you have not been following well lately. You’ve walked in a bunch of runs.

The good news about the gospel is that it applies to you most assuredly when you fail, when you fall short, when you are at your weakest and worst. We often think of the gospel message as being most clearly stated in the New Testament, but there are certain Old Testament passages that reveal to us that God’s character is indeed unchanging, and His heart has always been to redeem those who call upon His name – consider Micah 7:7-9, and see the gospel message (especially in the underlined parts of the passage) in the words spoken by the prophet:

But as for me, I will look to the LORD; 

I will wait for the God of my salvation; 

my God will hear me. 

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; 

when I fall, I shall rise; 

when I sit in darkness, 

the LORD will be a light to me. 

I will bear the indignation of the LORD 

because I have sinned against him, 

until he pleads my cause 

and executes judgment for me. 

He will bring me out to the light; 

I shall look upon his vindication.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not just for the raw rookie – the unbeliever who needs to come to faith. The gospel is for all those, even those who have been “training and competing” as Christians for decades, who recognize their weakness, their failures to abide, their own disobedience – and repent of it (even many times over), knowing that their God is a merciful and compassionate Father who desires to forgive. Even if you are someone who “should have known better”. The heavens declare His handiwork – we should all “know better” – and yet that does not limit the application of the gospel to our lives; and praise God for it!

In His name,

Eric