Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. (Hebrews 4:1, ESV)
I have it on good authority that human beings (that would be us) tend to lose flexibility as they age. Flexibility, as you may know, is a good thing to have if you play golf. The silly game requires a lot of twisting and turning and taking the club back and so on.
And it seems that if you take the club back a little farther, you can swing through a little faster. Which, when all of that is taken together, would explain why I can now only hit the ball out of my shadow on a sunny day between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
I’m aging, and my shoulder turn is about 23 percent of Rickie Fowler’s turn yet still takes longer to complete, and I arrive at my next shot much sooner than I would like.
If you want to be more flexible, like I do, then you have to work at it.But I’m fighting back, and I asked Santa Claus (AKA, Mrs. Greer) for a golf-specific stretching device for Christmas. We weren’t home when Christmas came, but Santa had me on the Nice list and came through with the device anyway. I opened it when we got home, and after using it just a few times I can tell that it is going to beat me up.
Perhaps somewhere in the back of my mind I thought this tool would be an “instant fix” for poor flexibility. Many golf training aids imply that they are a miracle cure, and a few say so explicitly. One of our Links Players here in Arizona was the poster boy for such an aid. I saw the commercial—and him—on TV before he knew it had been released.
But both celebrity and longer drives were fleeting, because a new product replaced that one, and he didn’t continue to use the device on a regular basis.
If you want to be more flexible, like I do, then you have to work at it. Stretching will become a regular activity for me, and this device will help. But I will have to use it.
And so it is with our faith. We don’t just have it; we must use it in order that it might grow, become stronger, reach higher. Paul understood this when he wrote to the Philippians, “Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12, CSB).
Being a follower of Jesus requires effort, Paul says, and I agree.
I need to remind myself of that, so I’m going to put a little label on my Christmas gift: Stretch Your Faith. Perhaps I’ll even remember that when I stretch (insert laughter here) before I start a round of golf.
—
Lewis Greer
January 14, 2019
Copyright 2019 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.