If you know me at all, you know that I love golf. I can’t tell you why or point you to a specific reason, but I just love game. You could say I am passionate about it. I grew to love it at an early age. It was more about hanging out with my dad and learning lessons about golf and life from him than it was about playing the game. Now I find myself back in the same situation, but this time I am the one sharing the lessons with my son.
I think one of the reasons I love the game so much is because of the correlation between the game and life. There are so many lessons that translate from the game of golf to the way we live our life. You want to keep the ball in the short grass, the fairway. You don’t want to be in the ROUGH. Tough to get out of the long grass once you’re in it. Sand TRAPS are always in play. When you are playing golf, it’s easy to make the correlation to life. You don’t want to be in the rough, but sometimes you are. You hit a shot you didn’t intend to hit and you ended up somewhere you didn’t intend to end up. Or maybe you hit a horrible shot off the tee and you slice it out of bounds. You have to accept the consequences of your mistake, re-tee, and hit another shot. Bottom line, you’re not always in the fairway; the best place to hit a ball. So, with that said, golf, as in life, is not about if, but when. How do you handle the next shot, life, when you find yourself not in the fairway?
A verse I like for the times in life when either I have put myself in, or find myself in, because of extenuating circumstances is James 1:2-3.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”
Basically, as we face trials in life, consider it joy because of the long-term effects, not because of the short-term trial. When you face the trials, you gain the experience needed for the next time you face a trial knowing it’s not if, but when. So it is in golf. The more you hit out of the rough, the sand traps, or anywhere that isn’t the fairway, you gain experience for the next time you will have to hit one of those shots. Don’t get me wrong, the idea is to be always hitting out of the fairway, but that’s just not how it happens. You aren’t always going to make the perfect shot. Just like life. We make mistakes. We end up where we don’t want to be, at times. Learn from your mistakes and carry on knowing you have gained experience and endurance to carry on.
Love you all and praying for you today, church!
Keep it in the short grass!
Pastor Tim Fus
Pastor of Worship Ministries