Housed in my garage and nestled in an X-large bucket are over a couple hundred golf balls. They are rescued strays from my daily walk beside a golf course. Two lessons of wisdom do these golf balls hold for me.
Why do I bother to find stray golf balls and cart them home? I do this simply because I heed God’s warning that many of His children (my brothers and sisters) have gone off course and are lost. Thus, I ask myself is God calling me to ignore lost souls or to seek them out and yearn to help bring them home. For each little round sphere I find on any given day, I not only claim it, but I also vow to wish that many people who cross my path a God blessed day. It warms my heart how many, at first, seem startled by my words yet, immediately, smile and wish me the same. As those I greet leave my sight, a prayer is offered for their journey to be not solely on course but, also, “soul”y heaven-home bound.
Wisdom’s lesson here is no child of God is an island when it comes to walking a path strewn with lost fellow men. It might take eyes to find the lost; but what truly is needed are hands to pick them up, hearts to hold fast to the value of the lost and souls to pray them back on course and homeward bound. To be such eyes, hands, hearts and souls is God’s calling for both me and you.
Crazy as this sounds, whenever I spot a lost ball, I’ve learned to look close around for a second. Why? Because quite often where there’s one, there’s two. Every time I discover a second close by stray, I chuckle, look up to heaven and proclaim “Got it, Lord! Yep, they needed to go back to the Bible but didn’t.”. Let me explain.
My “two close by golf ball discoveries” tells me that the player. after hitting the first wayward shot, immediately, took a second swing and, with no correction having been applied, naturally repeated the same mistakes and landed the second ball in great proximity to the first off-course swing. Lesson is if we don’t go back and learn to reset and correct mistakes, our human nature will keep landing us in the same off-course direction. In order to get back on course, a golfer needs to pause, re-establish proper basics, trust their power to their learned, technical skill and then swing for the stars. In correcting their mistakes, all children of God need to do the same. They must stop before persistently going any farther off course, re-establish the fundamentals of their faith, trust God’s ability to re-navigate their lives through His forgiveness, grace and love and then reach for the heavens.
We cannot correct our mistakes on our own. On the contrary, only by owning God’s word, the Bible, and owning up to all it teaches can we disown our mistakes. Thus, the second wise lesson off-course golf balls have taught me is mistakes are often repeated unless we go back and heed the fundamental truths of God’s “B”asic “I”nstruction “B”efore “L”eaving “E”arth — His Bible.
Uplifted in a Broken Down World 