Be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. (James 5:8, NIV)
If only we could anticipate during the drive to the course just what the day will bring, we’d be a happier bunch. But oh, golf. It doesn’t love us that way.
When Masters and US Open winner Angel Cabrera teed off last Thursday in the Web.com Tour event in Florida, he likely did not see an 80 coming. He also had no way of knowing he’d still be 11 shots better than the next guy.
That next guy was a club pro from Florida, Ben DeArmond, who had a lot of support from his friends in the area. Ben is surely one of those guys we all appreciate—they stand on the range for hours at a time, talking serious golf with students they could just as easily be laughing at. Indeed, Ben could have drawn on that laughter by the time he’d played the second hole, where he made 17.
That’s not a typo. Poor, unsuspecting Ben hit six balls into the water and walked to the third tee 14 over par (he’d also bogeyed the first).
I’m not sure if Ben ever truly settled down after that, but he did par 10 of his last 11 holes. He didn’t break 90, but he finished and he gained some momentum for Friday’s second round—two things he may actually have expected when the day began.
As our several examples show, we almost never expect the day to bring the disappointing, the awful. Yet it may.Expectations. We all know their potential for letting us down. This holds true whether we are expecting things of ourselves or of others. Look at life this way and you’ll end up in the glass-half-empty camp. It’s not so disappointing there, its denizens will tell you.
But whether or not we cling to expectations, life can blindside us. It caught the disciples this way. For all Jesus’ warnings, they did not see his crucifixion coming. If he was the Messiah, as they believed, this idea would never have made sense. Surely the Savior was invincible.
Right up to the night of his arrest, however, the disciples missed what was coming. When Jesus told Judas to go do what he had to do, we read in John’s Gospel that “no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him” (John 13:28). This, even after Jesus had stated plainly that one of his men would betray him. Even John himself, one of the closest to Jesus, missed it.
And then there was Peter, who denied that he would deny Christ. The notion that after all they had been through together he would now back down had no place in Peter’s mind. But later he stood around the fire and flatly refuted every noted association with his Lord.
We cannot know what the day will bring. And as our several examples today show, we almost never expect it to bring the disappointing, the awful. Yet it may. One day, the world will be made new. Then our expectations will never be frustrated. But the future and the present are the same in this way: Jesus is here. In tears or in triumph, we must cling to him.
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Jeff Hopper
February 19, 2019
Copyright 2019 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.