If you know me you know I am a huge baseball fan. This love I have sometimes overshadows other things and I see so much of God in baseball that in 2015 I tried to analyze the postseason and came up with 17 pages of analysis and summary. The last paragraph of this essay though is one that sums up my connection and helps me communicate what I see in the game and I want to bring you in on that so you understand me more fully as I discover more of God in baseball.
God has very little to do with outcomes of baseball games but the essence in which you look at baseball you can see parallels all over the place for instance all the comebacks by Kansas City were miracles like Jesus did in the Bible. The fact that religion and sports are all about having faith in your team this is evident most clearly in baseball because of how many games they play. Baseball plays 162 regular season games in 183 days. When you play that many games in that long a time you have ups and downs you can loose hope and trust in anything. My definition of hope is trusting in what you do not understand or see. I believe this is a statement that can be related to all sports but baseball in particular because they play so many games you can go through rough patches and unbelief and still find hope because there is always a tomorrow in baseball until there isn’t one. Life will eventually end for all of us and its where we put our faith trust and hope that will determine where we will go when our tomorrows run out will we end up with God because we have rooted our faith in him and live forever much like the World Series heroes have done or will we root our faith elsewhere and see where we end up. Understanding is irrelevant when it comes to the cross and what Jesus did for us there. Just like Sports are irrelevant when we die we don’t have to understand everything we just have to understand what it means for us. There are far too many parallels to Christianity for me to find in baseball but it does one thing for me. It helps grow my relationship to God when I look past the game and try to understand it more.
A lot of this comes from just trying to understand and communicate what I see in baseball. So it is Opening day on Thursday and for the first time in my life I will only get 2/3 of a baseball season and I wonder who will win the World Series. I hope it is my Dodgers but you never know. My testimony and baseball are so intertwined that it would only make sense that the Dodgers win the World Series for the first time in my lifetime the year I am gone serving the Lord so yes I know that God has very little to do with baseball outcomes but he uses everything in this world to show himself to his people and my bet is that God will use this baseball season to teach me in ways I do not know at this point and I look forward to the day not when I celebrate a World Series for the Dodgers, but the day I see Jesus and he welcomes me to Heaven. God has used baseball and continues to use baseball in my life so I will draw close to God more than baseball because baseball is just a vehicle for God and I want God way more than the vehicle for God.
I will leave it all behind in August and I look forward to it because I want Gods best for me and so I miss 1/3 of the 2018 baseball season and 1/2 of the 2019 baseball season for God and that is great and I love it. I bet the Dodgers win the 2018 World Series and God uses that in peoples lives.
Fundraising Update: I am selling T-Shirts for $20 so if you want one please let me know. All proceeds go toward the mission trip.
