BASEBALL'S PARABLE OF GRACE

I thought I was finished blogging about Tiger pitcher Armando Galaragga and umpire Jim Joyce, until I read Walt Mueller's post on his blog learning my lines. Mueller is the Director of the Center for Parent and Youth Understanding in nearby Elizabethtown. He wrote yesterday:

In the many interviews I've heard with Jim Joyce over the course of the last several days, I am blown away by the redemptive power of grace. I've read books by and about umpires. I've watched interviews with umpires. None of them want their careers to be defined by that one glaring blown call. Jim Joyce's career will most likely be remembered because of a "safe" call on what should have been the 27th consecutive out. But it will also be remembered for someting great and amazing - the grace that turned the whole thing around. In several of Joyce's intervies he's mentioned how what was the lowest of low moments quickly turned to the highest of highs. . . . all because of grace.

The story not only provides great talking points and examples of the highest standards of sportsmanship, but it serves to remind us of what once was along with the great expectation of what some day will be again. The story of the blown call has become one of "shalom". . . that universal flourishing of all that God originally made that has since come undone. Still, we catch glimpses of the Garden through stuff like this. "Oh what a foretaste of glory divine" we might be able to sing about this moment.

In a world where sport all too often becomes a magnifier of our human depravity, something else took place last Wednesday night. And it was good! Wouldn't it be great if all of our play was marked by that kind of stuff?

Read Mueller's entire post by clicking the link above.