|
You're at a ball game. Baseball (it's that time again). There's something more casual about baseball anyway. It's deeply American. Printed in the dust of our past are traces of cleat marks. It's late afternoon. There's still sun left, but the heat has gone from it. It's cool in every way cool can be cool. It just doesn't get any better than this. A hot dog, a bag of roasted peanuts, and a large coke. There are no demands. Life is humming and as lazy as late summer days are supposed to be. Time to groove. Let the magic of that large wad of bubble gum do its work. Grooving and grazing. You're not there to think. You may not even be there for the game. You may not care about winning or losing, Who's on first, or I Don't Know is on third. Maybe you're there for the diversion that baseball, like no other event, can be. You're there to loose the restraints, to yell, to laugh, to sing silly songs, to eat hazardous food, to call back the kid. Life as we once dreamed it. But then you see it. You see it as you always see it at coliseums and stadiums everywhere, or scrawled on bathroom walls, on buses or bumper stickers. Whether it hangs limp over a railing or rises bannerlike in the middle of a wave. JOHN 3:16. It's part of the sports tradition. It's become an accepted part of Americana. Beer, baseball, and JOHN 3:16. This is an advertisement. God does love the world. God is love. He's given himself no choice. It's a law that He submits Himself to. And as I will say over and over again, love is all He has asked of you and I. It's the very secret of life. Love is the only command Christ gave, that we love one another even as He loves us. Love is all our faith is about. Therefore, practice global warming. Though it invokes images of ecological and maybe even political concern, it's also what love does. Love warms the planet. (I've simply borrowed the use of the term.) Practice JOHN 3:16 with your life. Be a living billboard. Mimic God. Practice Global Warming. Practice Local Warming. Say I LOVE YOU. Keep it in ready reserve on the tongue. It's the divine in you waiting to be expressed. I have no opinion about banners at ball games (and don't read one in this). We should be living banners everywhere we go. But as our guy so proudly demonstrates, and to borrow a cliche', maybe it's time to, as they say, "raise the bar." © 2007 David Teems. All rights reserved.
|
||
