Go Yankees!

I am a big sports fan. I enjoy watching sports, playing sports, and talking about sports. I enjoy being a New York Yankees fan and talking to Boston Red Sox fans, and I hope at some point in my life to go to a Yankees vs. Red Sox game before I die.

When you watch baseball, particularly the Yankees, very often one of the batters in their All-Star lineup will swing as hard as they can and make contact with the ball and it sails out of the ballpark into the stands, awakening a sea of hands and arms hoping to catch the ball and bring it home as the one souvenir at the ballpark that they can actually afford! The announcers will often speak of the batter hitting the sweet spot on the bat as they sent the ball into short orbit. This ever elusive 'sweet spot' is the place on the bat that it the prime spot for contact. There isn't a specified 'sweet spot zone' on the Louisville Slugger, but you just seem to know it when you find it because of the results that it shows.

There's a lot of mechanics in baseball to the art of batting, but the one element to level the playing field is the bat. It's kind of a standard in the game. The rules say that the bat "can be no more than 2.75 inches in diameter at the thickest part and no more than 42 inches in length. It typically weighs no more than 33 ounces." On some days the sweet spot feels like the entire bat and you can do no wrong; on some days, that sweet spot feels like an ever elusive dream.

If we take this sweet spot out of professional baseball, and bring it into a practical Christianity context, we can identify that we have a God-ordained sweet spot! This is a place of intersection where God has called us to live in and function out of. We cannot be anything we want to be, or even anything people want us to be. But we can be everything God created us to be, and this only happens as we are operating in our sweet spot. When we identify and reside in that sweet spot, we will find ourselves in a prime spot to be faithful in our walk with the Lord, and we will find ourselves having success as we go through our everyday events.

Now, remember, this sweet spot is ever elusive, and some times will be working for you, but other times it's going to be tough! Work through the tough times, and thrive on those sweet spot moments when you feel like you can knock one out of the park over the center field wall.

Next time you check out a baseball game on ESPN or attend a Little League game, think about your God ordained sweet spot, and evaluate your spiritual home run average. Also, if any of you have any Yankees vs. Red Sox tickets you'd like to part with, I would most willingly take them off your hands!