“And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:3, NIV)
Maybe golf history doesn’t mean much to you. You may not know Old Tom Morris from Young Tom Morris, let alone from Harry Vardon or Francis Ouimet. You can’t name even one of the LPGA’s founders. And Dr. Alister Mackenzie might as well be the chief surgeon your mother watched on General Hospital all those years.
In truth, golf history will probably only get you so far, unless you’re a broadcaster, sportswriter, or a guy on a stool somewhere trying to win a bar bet. But when we gain a sense of what God has done in the history of his people through the reading of Scripture, we find all kinds of help in understanding how we are to live today.
Let’s start with Abram. That’s not quite as far back as we can go, but it’ll take us back roughly 3,800 years to the land of Ur, where the Lord appeared to Abram (not yet Abraham, as he would more familiarly become) and told him to head west to “the land I will show you.” This land was Canaan. Beyond the land, though, God promised Abram blessing, including that this man would become a great nation and bear a great name. It was a remarkable promise in that Abram had no children at this stage and was being told to leave the home of his ancestry.
But here is something more important still: Abram was not being blessed for his own sake. Rather, he was being blessed so that all peoples on earth could be blessed through him.
If you or I were told that we were being given blessings from heaven for the sake of our family, down to our grandchildren, we would likely think that was enough. We would thank God for it. But Abram was being told his blessing would spread so much farther than this. The world would be blessed through him.
In this year’s Links Players magazine, we see that Wesley Bryan was given a succession of real, earthly blessings from God. Wesley’s faith kept him grounded during this time, and he has managed those blessings well. We may not see the same catalog of blessing in our lives, but the responsibility is there for us just as it was for Abram and for Wesley: Do well with what we’ve been given. And surely the best thing we have been given is salvation in Christ, the message of which we are charged to carry as disciples “to all nations.” Sound familiar? See, this isn’t just history.
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Jeff Hopper
April 6, 2018
Copyright 2018 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
MORE DEVOTIONS IN THIS SERIES
Links Players Mag 2: EJ in God’s Hands
Links Players Mag 3: Ted’s Forgiveness
Links Players Mag 4: Austin’s Growth
Links Players Mag 5: Stanko’s Trials
Links Players Mag 6: Andrea’s Openness