BASEBALL GETS IT

Perhaps you do not know what a batting average is. It is the percentage of hits you get in relationship to the number of times you step up to the plate.

Now a hit is not just the bat connecting with the ball. Sometimes, you will hit a foul ball. That does not count as a hit. Sometimes you will hit the ball 400 feet, but if the center fielder reaches over the fence and actually catches the ball, NO HIT! You might hit the ball on the ground and the short stop picks it up and throws it to first base before you can get there, and that is not a hit. It is a tad difficult to get a legal bona fide hit!

Good to exceptional baseball players usually hit somewhere between 285 and 325. Ted Williams was the only player in the history of baseball to hit 400 for an entire season.

If you are hitting between 285 and 325, that means that you are getting a hit somewhere between 28 and 32 percent of the time. It also means that you are failing 72 to 68 percent of the time. But, interestingly enough, baseball does not consider it failure. It's just part of the game. However, baseball does require that you step up to the plate 100 percent of the time even though you know ahead of time that you will only be about 30 percent successful. Wow!

Perhaps if you are putting together airplanes and space shuttles, you must bat better than 300! Hopefully your local brain surgeon bats better than 300.

But most of what we do in life is not as delicate as brain surgery and most of day-to-day life entails a large percentage of failure. But the key is our willingness to continue to step up to the plate.

So, the lesson here is, to give ourselves that room for error that baseball just takes for granted. They don't even consider it error. And can we give this same room for error to our loved ones, including our children, who are blossoming with mistakes all over the place. And can we, like baseball, stop thinking of these mistakes as mistakes, but rather just part of growing up and learning how to live in this big ol' world.

So the next time you think that working on your relationship with your sweetie pie is impossible, just remember, you both only have to bat three hundred. No, it's not settling for less. In fact, in baseball, when you bat three hundred, it creates the illusion that you are getting a hit all the time. And the same is true in relationships. If you are batting three hundred in your relationship, it is not an illusion, but a reality, that you are working at your relationship and stepping up to the plate a hundred percent of the time, and being quite successful.

THINK about it. Oh, you know that verse in Scripture where Jesus exhorts us to be as PERFECT as his heavenly father? The actual Greek translation is not "perfect," but "grown up"! Ah ah! Yes, grown up folks know the reality of mistakes and failure and grown up folks continue to step up to the plate and grown up folks bat about 300!

What do you think? Leave a comment or two or three!

Thanks for reading

Vern