A good reputation is more valuable than the most expensive perfume. In the same way, the day you die is better than the day you are born. (Ecclesiastes 7:1, NLT)
I was watching a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game recently with a friend. If you didn’t see the game in its entirety, you almost surely saw the game’s most stunning moment, when Lakers forward Metta World Peace (formerly Ron Artest), sent Oklahoma City’s James Harden to the floor with a purposeful elbow to the head.
As we were shown the replay over and over, we said to each other in all our years watching golf on TV we would never see anything like this!
One of our Links Players in my area is the godfather of a rising star in the golf world. This man has expressed to me that what amazes him is how polite his godson is and how he has grown up to be such a gentleman. A lot of this maturity, this friend posits, is due to the godson growing up playing golf. He would play an amateur event and thank the volunteers for being there and volunteering on the first tee box! The prevailing culture of golf encourages this kind of graciousness.
One of my favorite books in the Bible is Ecclesiastes, written by Solomon, the wisest of Israel’s kings. As I get older, I realize how much this book is relevant to our life today. If you have not read it in a while, I encourage you to. I even recommended it to my son not too long ago!
The opening verse of Ecclesiastes 7 reminds me how our reputation is so important, especially if we want to be a great witness to our friends and family.
When I go to funerals, I love when people get up and speak of the person who has passed away, especially when the deceased has been a follower of Jesus Christ. The stories that make the most impact come from people the family does not even know who speak honorably about their beloved’s outstanding reputation at the golf club, the office, the church or in the community.
When we die, people will speak at our funerals too. As a follower of Jesus, the day you die really will be better than the day you were born—for then you will walk side-by-side with the Savior. But before we get to that day, we want to walk with Jesus as our guide and our Lord. If we do this, his reputation will cover us, and others will see him through us.
Our lives author volumes that others will read. Will we be a page-turner, always provoking interest for the sake of our Savior? We will if we give him the power to build his excellence into us.
—
Dereck Wong
May 10, 2012
Copyright © 2012 Links Players International
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