The other events of Manasseh’s life, including his prayer to his God and the words the seers spoke to him in the name of the LORD, the God of Israel, are written in the annals of the kings of Israel. (2 Chronicles 33:18, NIV)
Gary Woodland’s 2019 US Open victory will be remembered for three fantastic moments:
– His screaming 3-wood up the hill at the par-5 fourteenth. It barely covered the gaping front bunker, the rough softening its landing, and came to rest close enough to the green for a mostly pedestrian chip-and-putt birdie.
– His gutsy brushed wedge from the right half of the vast seventeenth green, over the ridge on a precise line and skidding with the perfect amount of spin. He tapped in for par to hold on to his two-shot lead with a hole to play.
– His victory lap 30-foot putt that found the center of the cup at the eighteenth when he had three putts to win. He needed just that one.
Those moments were noticed because they happened on Sunday when all the golfing world was watching and all the proverbial chips were on the table. But I’ll daresay that those moments were memorable only because of what had already happened.
– On Thursday, Woodland found himself on the same right side of the seventeenth green, faced with a pitch shorter but much like the one he would have on Sunday. He pulled off the same creative wedge-putter combo he would need in crunch time. And when that pivotal choice came around again, his confidence was already there.
– On Saturday, Woodland’s tee shot at the par-3 twelfth nestled in the rough above the front bunker, leaving him with a grip-it-down-to-the-metal, baseball-style touch shot. He shanked it. (Yes, he did, even if you won’t say it.) Then, from 34 feet, he chipped in, saving his momentum with an unlikely par.
– Two holes later—and you can decide whether this one was more unlikely—he did it again. Playing twice from the deep rough on the Tour’s toughest par-5, he ended up with a long wedge for his fourth shot. It came up 43 feet short. He holed the putt.
The lives of which we read in Scripture are often presented to us as highlight reels. We don’t know all that shaped a person’s life, the little stops along the way that corrected and enlightened and trained each one for the stories we then read.
This is the way not only with the kings of Israel, or the Lord Jesus (see John 21:25), or the apostles, the accounts of which center around Paul, even as John and Jesus’ brother James were busy in ministry, too. This is also the way for us. We may convince ourselves that the only events that matter in life are those worthy of our social media timelines. Not if God is at work as we say he is. Not if he walks with us and talks with us.
Every moment is pregnant with possibility. No one welcomes the labor pains like they do the beautiful child born of them. But we cannot hold the child without all that comes before it, all the lead-up that no one really notices. No one, perhaps, but you and God.
—
Jeff Hopper
June 18, 2019
Copyright 2019 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.