Baseball is a grind. It’s not the length of the season, as many other sports last for a similar amount of time, it is the day after day after day performance during the season. No other sport competes like baseball. You may have won the game yesterday and walked off the hero, but it all starts again today with a new game and a blank scoreboard. It is that very grind of the season that in part draws me to baseball.
It is the annual hope that springs eternal – this will be the year! It is the daily action – the daily chance to redeem yourself - the chance to go from yesterday’s goat to today’s hero in less than 24 hours. But, it is that grind that can get to you if you are not careful . . .
The “it” for you might be your career, your family, your faith, you name “it”.
Life is a grind at best some days and if the daily grind can get to the best imagine what it can do to the rest of us. The grind of baseball has gotten to me this summer. For the first time in 10 years, my Minnesota Twins have had a terrible summer. The grind of watching them day after day has worn on me. I’ve been through losing with them before, but this was different - Players were constantly hurt - Simple plays were blown – it has just been hard to watch. I now truly understand what it must be like every year for a Chicago Cubs Fan.
I think Zephaniah would have a liked the daily grind of a baseball season. I think he would have understood my depression this season. After all, he was one of the prophets that daily was bringing the same message of destruction and repentance to a nation of people that seemingly were deaf. For him each day was grind.
Allow me to explain.
Background Information on Zephaniah:
• Time period: 640 B.C. – 621 B.C. same time Josiah becomes king
• Contemporary with the prophet Jeremiah
• Josiah was King when the book of the law was found
• evidence suggests that Zephaniah played a role in the reform of the nation
• Prophet foretold the destruction of Nineveh and several other cities
• Purpose of Zephaniah was to ‘shake’ the people from their complacency
• Zephaniah had a tough message to deliver
• His message is balanced with an incredible message of hope (3:17).
The people had become complacent. Zephaniah issues a call to return to the basics (2:1-3). The people needed to return to the basic tenets of their faith. The basics are important. Ball players at any level practice – they take grounders, they shag fly balls, and they take batting practice.
At every level, they continue to practice the basics. A manager will often talk about his team forgetting the basics after a particularly embarrassing loss. As a player continues to advance and practice – they are better – not only at the basics, but at the game of baseball as well.
Now let’s forget the baseball stories for a moment because I don’t want you to miss the wonderful message of hope that Zephaniah has for you today.
Zephaniah 3:5 (simple translation) says:
"Every new day, God will not fail." You can fill in the blanks
Your co-workers will fail you some days, your boss will fail you, your family will fail you, your mate (or boy/girlfriend) will fail you, politicians and governments will fail you, your church will fail you, fellow believers will fail you, even spiritual leaders will fail you. But "every new day, God will not fail."
God has based some of His central promises on daily delivery because we don't experience our life as weeks, or months, or even years. Rather, we experience life a day at a time. It is then that we become amazed as the days add up. God meets our needs in the form of “daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). “God’s mercies are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23). In Psalm 68:19, we're told that God is our "Savior, who daily bears our burdens." That's a good thing, because that's how we experience our burdens isn't it? Each day the weight of the burden is there waiting for us to pick it up. Deuteronomy 33:25 promises us that "your strength will equal your days." You will never have a day for which you do not have matching strength, even if some days give you more to carry than you have ever carried before.
Paul says, “do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). So, no matter how battered you got yesterday, no matter how tough the grind has become, God has promised that He will give you a renewing, rejuvenating, re-energizing touch each new day.
Think about that . . . even in those moments of the day when we fail, when we cannot go one more step, when we have had enough, when the grid is more than we can take – God is right there! God has promised He will be there with a renewing touch in our lives.
Allow me to finish with one final baseball story (San Francisco Chronicle June 1999 by Bruce Jenkins)
On September 14 1986, Bob Brenly was playing third base for the San Francisco Giants. Brenly, a catcher by trade, wasn't at all thrilled about his third-base assignment that day.
They say the baseball always finds the man who doesn't want it -- the emergency shortstop, the pitcher playing right field, the out-of-position catcher. On this sunny, calm afternoon, Brenly was a veritable magnet in the top of the fourth.
First came a routine grounder by Bob Horner, and Brenly booted it badly. "No problem there," he said. "I expect to make one error a day down there."
The Braves wound up loading the bases, and Glenn Hubbard hit a little nubber down the third-base line. This time, Brenly not only dropped the ball, enabling a run to score, he made a hurried, off-balance throw at least six feet wide of home plate. With the runners taking second and third, that meant two errors on a single play, and three for the inning.
"At that point I was thinking, 'Please, don't hit me anymore,' Brenly said at the time. "I would have hid under the bag if I could."
That would have been a safe place to watch the next development, a screaming line drive toward Brenly off the bat of the pitcher, scoring two more runs for 4-0. This one was ruled a single, too hot to handle, but Brenly was drifting into the Twilight Zone now, getting the chills as he realized that every single play was coming his way.
Fully shell-shocked, Brenly made his fourth error on a grounder hit directly at him by Dale Murphy. There was no further damage on the scoreboard, but when the team returned to the dugout, Brenly was a different man.
Brenly now has his name in the record book – Four errors in one inning – heck four errors in one game would have done it! As would be expected, the Braves were winning the game. The game progressed, but the Giants were still losing.
And then . . . it was Brenly’s turn to bat in the ninth, two outs and the count full, the last pitch, the last chance . . . and he hit a homerun to win the game.
In the words of Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
God gives us the opportunity to begin again each moment, each day.
Like in baseball, what happened in the past (the fourth inning and all those errors) doesn’t matter. God promises to meet us each day with just what we need: "Every new day, God will not fail!"
Look, life is a grind, so, some days you're going to wake up anxious. Some days you're going to wake up dreading the day. Some days you're going to be excited about what's ahead. Other days you're going to be overwhelmed by what's ahead, or some days you may be discouraged, or eager, or exhausted.
Sometimes in the middle of the day, you are going to feel like Bob Brenly – you want to crawl under a bag and hide. You will want to quit. But however you feel, no matter what that day holds - God will be there. So why don't you claim God's guarantee for yourself. In fact, say it with me now because you need to hear yourself say it, "Every new day . . . God will not fail!"
We understand Major League Pitcher Andy Petitte when he says, “it is tough to stick around.” After all life is sometimes a grind and sometimes that grind stinks, but I invite you to find hope in a God that is there with you.
I invite you to find joy in the promise that God is with you each day “as a strong and mighty warrior to save you” and as a giver of “mercy each new morning.”
God will not fail you!
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