I heard a great story today about a legendary college baseball coach named John Scolinos. At age 78 he was the keynote speaker at a national baseball coaches convention in 1996. He taught a simple lesson that was much more about life than about baseball. He pointed out that home plate is seventeen inches wide in every league from Little League to the Majors. Every pitcher on every team in every league must be able to get the ball over that seventeen-inch target to throw a strike. If a pitcher cannot hit the target, the umpire does not offer to widen the plate for him. The width of the plate is fixed and immutable, and it is incumbent on the pitcher to learn to hit it.
The path to eternal life is strait and narrow. God does not offer to widen it for us if we cannot seem to stay on it. His laws – the laws of the universe – are fixed and immutable, and it is incumbent on each of us to learn to follow them.
The good news is that every pitch does not have to be a perfect strike to win the game. A whole team backs up the pitcher. Christ is our whole team, backing us up, catching the flies, the bunts, and the hard grounders, and even making the double plays in a pinch. We don’t have to throw a perfect game, we just have to stay on the mound and keep pitching through the last out of the last inning. Jesus covers the rest of the bases.
