“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:5, ESV)
Because I wrote a book with the title Getting To Scratch, I’m occasionally asked by a fellow golfer whether or not I think they could be a scratch player.
It always reminds me of a brief conversation my friend and I had with a former tour player. My friend was a good athlete and had been deep into the game for several years. I had recently returned to golf after a five-year hiatus.
We pushed and encouraged each other, and we set goals. At the driving range one day we stopped to chat with John, the former tour pro, and boldly proclaimed to him that we intended to be scratch golfers.
“Have you ever been scratch golfers?”
I said yes and my friend said no. “Then,” said John, “one of you has a chance and one of you doesn’t.”
Put your heart into your love for God, put your being into your love for God, and work really hard at it.A couple of years later, after moving to Arizona, I got down to 0.4. Then I started working for Links, got older, got sick, and got older some more. My index is higher now, but in some ways I’m a better golfer today with the decimal point on the right side of the 4 than when it was on the left side.
Scratch is cool, of course, but our goal in golf is the same as our goal in love: to continually improve. Scores are valid measurements, but they are not the only ones for golf and they mean nothing in love.
Jesus called the commandment from Deuteronomy 6:5 the greatest of them all. Put your heart into your love for God, put your being into your love for God, and work really hard at it. It is that last part, I think, that is missing for many of us in our love for God. We don’t work at it.
In truth, if most of us worked as hard on our love for God as we do on our golf game (or whatever hobby we have), our relationship with him would be deeper and even more amazing than it already is.
In the meantime, getting to scratch is a wonderful goal, and with God all things are possible. But just try to understand the game and your game a little more every time you play, and the rewards will surprise you. Do exactly the same in your relationship with God, and the joy of it will fill you up.
That may just be better than scratch.
—
Lewis Greer
May 13, 2020
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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