Running in a Pinch

I stayed up later than I should have last night watching game four of the World Series.  I haven't watched too much baseball this year, probably because the Phillies are back to being terrible.  I find that if I'm not "following" baseball, it's kind of hard to watch without falling asleep.  But last night was a good game, albeit between two teams I don't even care enough about to dislike.  It was 4-2 Boston, going into the bottom of the 9th inning.  A St. Louis  player with a bum wheel got on first base and was promptly replaced with a pinch runner.  It was a no-brainer for the manager, the tying run was at the plate, and a little extra speed could make all the difference.  That is, unless the pinch runner gets picked off and makes the last out of the game.  The best laid plans you know.

I really felt kind of bad for that guy, a bench player, whose only job was to run the bases.  I could hear it: "you had one job..."  But I also felt bad for the manager, who had made the "right" move, who had put his team in a position to fight back and tie o win the game.  Who could have known that the runner would stumble just a little trying to get back to the base?

It's pretty well established that sports are a metaphor for life.  I think one of the reasons we take them so all-fired seriously is because they help us understand our place in the universe.  I think that has a lot to do with why football is out-competing religion for the hearts and minds of Americans pretty much every week from late summer to the middle of winter.  Sports show us the struggles of humanity against weakness and sin played out in high definition, and incarnates those struggles in games, where there's a lot less gray area, and fewer people get really hurt.

I also think that sports show us something about how God treats us: putting us in the place we need to be and then relying on our very fallible efforts.  If we slip, if we drop the ball, it's not the end, the plan remains the same, and we were supposed to be there, and maybe somehow, our failure becomes a strength.  It's really hard to imagine that making the last out of the game could be part of the plan, but sometimes it is.

As we know all too well in Philly, there's always next year.  There's always more to come, defeat is never final.

Jesus has shown us that forgiveness, redemption and even resurrection are all parts of the plan.

As John Calvin points out, the fact that there is grace and mercy in the plan sets us free for joyous obedience.  It sets us free to take that lead off of first, to strive to do our best.  Sometimes we mess up.  That doesn't mean the plan was bad, it just means that things don't always go according to plan. Faith gives us the guts to go back again and keep trying.  Not just our faith, but the faith that God has in us, to put us in the right place at the right time, again and again, knowing that sometimes we'll fail and sometimes we'll succeed but we'll always be in the game.