DEVOTIONAL FROM PASTOR DAVE JUNE 8, 2023

The 40 and over men’s church league softball season on Signal Mountain started up last week. It’s been several years since I’ve played in a competitive softball game, but I grabbed my glove and my ancient wooden bat out of the garage, borrowed a pair of Noah’s old soccer cleats, and joined the team. The team’s name is the Holey Sox. You all know I love that name!

We lost our first game to the St. Augustine’s Catholic Church team on Tuesday. On Thursday night, we played the team from St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church. We were up 13-4 going into the 3rd inning when our comfortable lead completely evaporated. They scored 23 runs on us in that inning! They went through their batting lineup three times. It took us about 35 minutes to get three outs. And it’s not for lack of trying. They just hit the holes and a few outright home runs.

I was playing catcher (probably the safest place they could put me, where I’d do the least amount of damage) so I saw it all firsthand. I thought our pitcher Jeff Romero’s arm was going to fall off. We were all just shaking our heads, dumbfounded. Even the St. Timothy’s guys weren’t quite sure what to make of it. The umpire said it was the longest inning he’d ever seen (in all the years of his late teenage life!).

When we finally got back up to bat in the bottom of the 3rd , we were down, but not out yet. We clawed our way back into the game with a few more runs each inning. I even got a few hits with my wooden bat, despite Drew Barton’s prediction that I would break the poor thing instead. We came into the bottom of the seventh and final inning tied at 34 runs each (church league softball is apparently a high scoring game!). All we had to do was get one run in and we’d win. So we set about rather methodically (because, after all, we’re Methodists) to get guys on base, and eventually we brought one of them home and won the game 35-34.

After the game (which lasted about two hours!), both teams circled up and we offered a prayer of thanksgiving for our fellowship together and for some of our teammates who were injured (after all, our bodies ain’t what they used to be). The next day I was telling Randy Evans about what had happened. I suspect it’s rather unusual even in the world of church league softball for a team to have such an abysmal inning and yet still win the game. He suggested that would make a good sermon illustration. That’s when I was inspired to write about it this week.

Maybe you’ve endured an inning in your life like that 3rd inning in our game. Or maybe you are right smack dab in the middle of an inning like that right now, where everything seems to be going against you, nothing seems to be going your way, and you’re at a loss as to what to do to turn this thing around.

I find the Apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthian church especially encouraging: “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies . . . So we do not lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:7-10, 16).

Even though you may be down, you’re not necessarily out. So don’t lose heart. Keep the faith. And come out and cheer on the Holey Sox this summer. We play most Tuesday and Thursday nights at the fields at Althaus Park. Our next games are tonight (June 8) and next Thursday (June 15), both at 8 pm.