the Week of Proper 25 / Ordinary 30
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Daily Devotionals
Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life
"Sometimes you're the bug and sometimes you're the windshield." A golfing buddy of mine said that the other day as he watched his ball take an unpredictable bounce and roll into a water hazard. Basically put, he was saying that sometimes the bounces go good and sometimes they don't. What happens from there is what counts. My buddy took his penalty stroke and laid out of the water hazard and then hit onto the green and two-putted for a double bogey.
If you play golf you know that double bogeys are the bane of a round of golf. That's two over par. Many golfers place a lot of importance on a two-over-par hole. If it comes early in the round they may drag that hole around with them for the rest of the game. The results can be disastrous. Remembering a bad shot can lead to repeating that bad shot over and over again in the round. Frustration then sets in and the golfer is just going through the motions. The round is pretty much over, but, hey, it is paid for so let's finish it no matter how badly it's going.
The beauty of golf is that it is played on individual venues called holes. What many golfers need to remember is that, once a hole is over, it's over. Let it be over. The next hole is waiting. The other evening I got to play in a little scramble event. Our team did the unthinkable for a scramble team. We bogeyed a hole. Usually a scramble team will have no worse than par for a hole, but there we were with a bogey. We missed the green and blew the up-and-down for the par. On the way to the next tee one of the guys said, "The round begins now."
Off the next tee, our number two man hit a monster drive on the par five that left us just a little over two hundred yards from the pin. I nailed a shot to five feet from the pin and then our number three guy rolled the putt in for an eagle. We got the bogey back and then some. That's how it should be. When bad things happen, rally. When the going gets bad, put it behind you and start a new day. When sin has overcome you in a single day or moment, remember that God is waiting to hear from you and forgive you. Then that sin is behind you.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote, "No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." Jeremiah 31:34 However, my favorite is in Micah 7:19. "You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea." God is the judge. If He is willing to forgive, forget and put it away for good, then we need to get the memo and put it behind us.
'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.
