I know a man in Christ; it wasn’t long ago that this man had a dream. The dream was about nothing more than a simple baseball game. And so it’s not the dream that’s important, but it was what the dream set off. When the man awoke he began to think of his ball playing years. Taking himself back delighted him. However when finally he returned to the present, he thought of how the sixties and seventies were long ago. Then he realized that not only couldn’t he get a good swing on a bat anymore, but he’d have a hard time even gripping one. And as far as the speed he once had around the bases – it was long gone. Now he had lost the ability to even jog, due to a physical condition. Depression began to take hold of him. But just in time the Spirit came to his rescue. He was sure that he felt His touch. Next the Spirit even spoke. He began telling the man that those games were not the real contests, and that it was now that he was being called to exercise his true gifts and talents. The Spirit spoke of how even now he was at climactic points in the contests of his life – contests given him from above. But the man was reminded that they are on a battlefield; and that they are on a running track; and that they are in a prizefighter’s ring. The Spirit encouraged the man to fight for the prize that awaited him, ensuring that there was laid up in store for him an imperishable crown.
The outcome of it all was this. The man felt that he was given a fresh new start in contending with a dark and menacing adversary. Now his main ambition was that at the end of his time in this world he would be found still standing – standing and the victor in the contest of his life; that on the last day he could leap with his hands raised high in the air, with the enemy of his soul on the canvass. This now had become his great hope. Yet he believed that first he had to present himself humbly before his God, and in all of his infirmities. For he had come to understand that when we are weak, only then are we strong.
As for his imperishable crown, he’d read how that Jesus will descend to earth one day with many crowns upon His head. What he wished more than anything, was that his Lord would accept his; that it would be numbered with the many. For he was convinced that it was Christ and no other, who at the Resurrection became every believer’s victory, both now and forever.
This man’s experience caused me to ponder an issue that I’d already felt to be true; it is this. The real contests in life – they haven’t to do with the world of sports with which we’re all acquainted. Still thousands upon thousands fill stadiums every day all over the globe to witness athletic events, cheering and booing as though something of such great importance hung in the balance. Yet in the eyes of the saints who have gone on before us, we can be assured that the outcome of these games are inconsequential. As children of God and believers in His kingdom, should we not come to understand who we are? As many are the numbers that gather together to watch as earthly teams compete – far less are they than the throngs who draw near to observe the offspring of God. For who can know the sum of “an innumerable company of angels along with the spirits of just men made perfect?” The book of Hebrews tells of them. These are the great cloud of witnesses that surround us, watching and praying while we contend with the darkness. These are conflicts that the world can neither see nor understand. But He opens the eyes of His own that they may know what is true. Still, who is it that we contend for? Should it not be for the Son, who the man clearly saw as being every believer’s victory? Is He not then worthy of every crown? And that they all may adorn the once wounded Head on the day He descends to our world from the right hand of Power – in Light unapproachable and in all of heaven’s glory. Even as it’s written in the end – come, Lord Jesus!
- J. Pecoraro
