the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Daily Devotionals
Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life
Back in the mid 60's there were a number of us in my home town of Jeffersonville, Ohio, who were devoted to sports in general and baseball in particular. During the late Spring, through the Summer and on into the warmer days of Fall, we played baseball. But the public diamonds in town were so heavily scheduled that we could not play on them. Kenny Houseman, a farmer/businessman in the town, gave us some land on the north edge of town just over the bridge on 729. He owned the field and had farmed it. It became our ballfield.
Our little group of somewhere around fifteen guys all pitched in and bought chicken wire for the back stop along with two by fours. We built the back stop about fourteen feet high and thirty feet wide to stop any ball missed or fouled off. It wrapped around the home plate area. Our outfield fence was an assist from Kenny Houseman. He and a few friends had some old snow fence that was pretty far gone. They gave it to us and we removed the old pickets and replaced them with good ones from the other fencing. It served its purpose.
We mowed the entire field and then caught a break. It rained. While the field was still wet we were able to wrangle a roller and we rolled the field as smooth as we could get it. Our bases were feed sacks filled with sawdust and painted white. Our home plate was homemade by Richard Kinneson out of cast off plywood. The pitching rubber was a two by four painted white and fastened to the ground by spouting nails. The left and right field lines were cast off fire hoses from the local volunteer fire department painted white and also nailed to the ground.
When we finished we stepped back and took a long hard look at what we had made. "Shag Stadium" was not a masterpiece but it was a great place for us to play ball and we had built it. We declared it to be good. God created the heavens and the earth. How, I have no idea. When it came time to create man he used a different method from the other things he had created.
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being." Genesis 2:7 God exerted some effort to make man. He labored over His creation. Then He declared it good. When you take time to make something and make it just so, you have a keener appreciation, even love, for that one thing. Is it any wonder that, after painstakingly forming man, God would send His Son to save His creation?
'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' Copyright 2010 © Tom Kelley. 'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' articles may be reproduced in whole under the following provisions: 1) A proper credit must be given to the author at the end of each story, along with their complete bio and a link to https://www.studylight.org/ 2) 'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' content may not be arranged or "mirrored" as a competitive online service.
