The Baseball Pitching Machine

In the daily course of conversation you can often hear someone say "I am just busy with life". I doubt that few of us cannot identify with what we perceive to be the message behind the statement. Life often lives her own life at a pace that can be difficult to keep up. In making life it's own entity we can quickly put together a list of items she seems to throw at us from every direction. I am also confident that many of us would describe life's ability to "throw out her stuff" as if it is being distributed by a baseball pitching machine set at high speed. The normal defensive move when experiencing such is to hunker down, cover up the best you can and pray that the machine runs out of baseballs quickly. Describing ourselves as "just busy with life" is the quickest way to share with someone that we are dealing with a lot of different issues and that we will not have the time to explain any of them. Our "just busy" condition gives us a quick way out and relieves us for the immediate moment of explaining ourselves, but that might not be best for us. With the celebration of Easter still on my mind from this past weekend, I cannot help but think about Jesus and the quick pace of life he experienced, faced and dealt with during his lifetime. In the last week of His life he was applauded and greeted with cheers as He entered the City of Jerusalem. At the surface of things that seems like a great way to begin any week. Who doesn't like being welcomed and from every appearance loved too! Yet, in His last week of life He would be betrayed by a close friend named Judas. Another close friend named Peter would swear allegiance only to turn out to not be a man of his word at that moment in time. Life started throwing out accusations and Peter quickly tried to hunker down but the pitching machine of life wasn't going to stop until he denied knowing who Jesus was. For me there is no doubt that what I just described would be more than enough to deal with, but for Jesus, that last week was still filled with more. He would experience being lied about by those who held leadership positions in the community and the church of all things. Jesus was arrested unlawfully and he actually experienced being tried and convicted by his enemies and the court of public opinion without even having a single visit to a legal court. Finally getting His day in court, Jesus discovered the legal courts had no intention of dealing with Him fairly at all. Life's players seemed to have everything stacked up against Jesus and no doubt those individuals had a sense of self-pride believing they had accomplished their goal completely. The one thing I can think of that is very upsetting to life is when you think you have everything taken care of and you discover there were some details you missed in your preparations. Jesus had predicted His death. He had predicted the circumstances surrounding the situation and He had even shared that He would rise again after the third day. These facts seemed to be overlooked. It might have been because those working against Him were "just busy with life", planning and plotting and they missed the important details. I appears very clear to me that there is something to be said for the details of life. In advertisements often suggest or say you better read the fine print. We say this because of our experiences and we share this word of caution because we would like to help others avoid a particular snare of life. Getting busy is really easy to do, paying attention to detail is actually a good habit that once practiced becomes an art to living life most effectively. The things that beset us in life are not necessarily being hit by a fastball or a curve ball hurled out by a baseball pitching machine. If you know anything about baseball you understand that players are actually taught how to take a hit. How to step-into a pitch. How not to be afraid of the fast ball that is coming at you. Learning to keep you eye on the ball from the pitchers glove and hand, until you connect your bat with the ball is the key and art to getting a hit. I am not suggesting that this is an easy art to master, but it is practice that makes your success more likely. There is a lot that can be said for being "just busy with life" but nothing can replace your preparation for life and I suggest a look at the life of Jesus for your answers. Until then