Ah, baseball season has arrived. The grass is freshly cut, the final rosters are set, and there is excitement in the air. In fact, several MLB teams actually started their season yesterday including my Cardinals who got a good start on defending their World Series title from a year ago. However, while many baseball teams and fans are excited about the start to the season a story came out yesterday about one team who might have to go back to the drawing boards.
For the last three years the State College of Florida located in Sarasota has been able to set up charity games with Major League teams to raise money. The last two years the Pittsburgh Pirates had been gracious enough to send some of their rookies and Minor Leaguers to help this small community college out and this year my hat is off to the Baltimore Orioles for being willing to send some of their Major League roster players for this worthy event. The only problem is they lost! Now, granted this game was considered to be a “controlled scrimmage” and the Orioles only allowed some of their star players a limited time on the field so as not to risk injury before their season started – plus they only played eight innings instead of nine. But they lost! In the world of professional sports this just isn’t supposed to happen.
But it does happen sometimes. Sometimes teams with more tradition, more talent, more resources, more expectation enter a contest with a “lesser” opponent and assume that they will be able to win just by showing up. This very attitude is what fuels many “Cinderella stories” throughout March Madness. But then after the embarrassment of losing they have a long time to stew in their own self-pity telling themselves over and over, “It wasn’t supposed to happen to me!”
How many otherwise strong and dedicated Christians have had to recite similar words. They believed they were at the epoch of Christianity. They thought their faith was so strong it could not fail even in the midst of heavy temptation. They saw themselves as invincible. However, while the devil isn’t God with unlimited resources of power and perception he isn’t dumb either. Satan knows exactly what he wants and exactly what he needs to do to accomplish it. Thus if we let our guards down even for a moment in time sin will find a way to present itself. But we do not fear because we “cannot fall!” However, isn’t that the very attitude Paul wrote to warn against in 1 Corinthians 10:12 when he said, “wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” Does this mean that we will fall? Does this mean we have no hope so we might as well give in to temptation now and save ourselves the trouble? No and no! However, it does mean that we should recognize our fragile state and be on constant guard against such temptations so that we do not have our lifetimes or even an eternity with those terrible words ringing in our ears – “It wasn’t supposed to happen to me!”