Swing the bat
Scripture Reading: 1 Peter 4:7-11
After six decades of living, I still haven’t decided if one of my tendencies is a blessing or a curse. Since childhood, I have always felt a compulsion to see if I can make what interests me. I’d rather build it than buy it. When I looked at a guitar, my first thought wasn’t, “I wonder how you play that thing?” It was, “I wonder if I can make that thing?” And I would pick up a tree branch and start whittling away until it looked something like a guitar neck. I learned how to do taxidermy and mounted a few fish. I learned leather working and made belts and wallets. When I was a high school junior, I went to an upholstery store in Tulsa and bought a roll of black vinyl, and made a tonneau cover for my truck. I stitched a large chevy emblem right in the middle of it.
This list goes on. Some things I thought about but never actually tried. When I was a boy, I thought I would build a small aircraft. I studied the laws of aerodynamics and how wings work, but that idea never got off the ground (pun intended). I dreamed of starting a chicken egg farm because I saw all the stuff in a farm magazine my dad had. That idea never hatched either.
One thing I learned through this personality quirk is at some point you have to stop reading and studying up on how to do something and try to do it. Your first efforts are likely to be amateurish and imperfect, but you never become proficient at anything by merely reading about it. You have to do it.
In our text today, Peter exhorts us to love, be hospitable, and use our spiritual gift(s) to serve others. We should be present at worship and Bible study. We should read the Word of God. We should think about how to live the Christian life in this world. But we can’t allow this to remain as mere academic information that is never practiced.
There is a story about Yogi Berra, former New York Yankees catcher, and home run king, Hank Aaron. At the time, Aaron was playing for the Milwaukee Braves and the Braves were facing the Yankees in the World Series. Berra was known for endless chatter while he was behind the plate. At one point, when Hank Aaron came up to bat, Berra said, “Henry, you’re holding the bat wrong. You’re supposed to hold it where you can read the trademark.”
Aaron didn’t say anything in response, but he hit the next pitch into the left-field bleachers. After running the bases, and as he came across home plate, Hank Aaron looked at Yogi Berra and said, “I didn’t come up here to read, Yogi.”
Step up to the plate and swing.
