Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Full Circle

The idea of a “prayer journal” first struck me several years ago on a visit to Greg’s in Long Beach. At the time, Greg was meeting with 2 or 3 other guys for a time of prayer. On one of my visits to Greg’s, I attended one of their meetings. The group shared with me a prayer journal they had been keeping. It was nothing short of remarkable to see how they could point to a page where they had recorded a person or concern prayed for, and then to see on another page where they were able to record God’s answer to that prayer. This post is somewhat like that journal.

Two or three months ago, I wrote a post about a dinner I had with my son and his two friends Devin and Ryan following baseball tryouts. The subject was their estimation of their chances of making the Varsity Baseball Team. At that dinner my son Steven asked Devin and Ryan if they had been praying to God concerning their desire to make the team? The end result was Steven made the team as a “swing (playing both J.V. and Varsity games) player” while Devin and Ryan were placed on the J.V. team.

Their prayers and their dreams came full circle tonight in Palm Bay. We were up 10 to 0 in the 4th when Devin, Ryan, and Steven were inserted into the hitting lineup. They had talked about this some in the guise of next year. It was neat to see these 3 friends hitting back to back to back. I wish I could post the smiles they had on their faces.

Devin led off the inning with a double! Big smile. His twin brother Ryan flew out to deep right field. Still smiling. Then Steven hit a single. Another big smile. Steven ended up being the only one of the three to play (leftfield) the field but the prayer had been answered. Thank you God for allowing me to see the prayers of some teenage boys come full circle.
BTW, we ended up beating Sebastian River 13 to 3 to advance to the tournament championship game tomorrow.

Have a good day bloggers.
Greg - I know a smile will come to your face as I tell that tomorrow will be my third straight trip to Palm Bay in as many days.

Comments:
That must have been fun to see them all slugging for the team. Great. I used to love baseball so much!
 
That is a GREAT story. I love baseball but never more than when I see the players actually smiling!
 
Greg - You would have loved the chance to travel to Palm Bay sans rain and with cool temps.

Judy - I agree.

Brady and Steve - It made the win even more enjoyable to see these friends contributing to the varsity effort as sophmores.

Randy - Glad you got it right about the crying and not the smiling. When I coached Little League, "crying" was my pet peeve.

We came up with a fun drill at the end of practice one day when Steven was 12. We had each player stand at the plate with a bat and pretend to swing and miss at strike 3. All the coaches would yell "Strike 3." As the kid ran back to the dugout we would all pretend to be a taunting crowd yelling things like, "You're horrible, you suck, you're embarassing, ect, ect."

Our intent while having a little fun was to teach the kids to run back to the dugout if they struck out without crying! They loved it.
 
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