Like many of you, I’ve had a stick in my hand for a long time. Indeed, some of my earliest memories of both golf and God come from walking around in God‘s original cathedral — nature — or if you really pressed my grandfather, the golf course.
Some of my earliest memories of connecting to God come from prayers that my grandmother and I would pray on her tee box, where my grandfather insisted that I tee off in order to help with pace of play or, as he would say, “to try to keep things down the middle.” Indeed, until I was probably 11, my grandfather always insisted that if I couldn’t hit a fairway with a five iron, I need not take any other club out of the bag.
My friends, I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more challenging it is to keep things down the middle.
The game of life (and golf) seems to get strangely more complicated with each passing year. We have bigger goals or lower scores, expectations, distractions, or hardships that come our way. Indeed, over time, even our bodies, these flesh and bone temples of God’s spirit, begin to make it a little more challenging for us to trust and see that the abundant life Jesus so often preached is still within our reach.
I’m here to tell you that Jesus didn’t want life with God to be this complicated. JESUS had one simple suggestion for his disciples, one “swing thought,” and it was an invitation to abide.
In John’s gospel, having washed the disciples’ feet and served them a last supper, Jesus prayed for his friends and reminded them that, like a vine attached to its source, the way of following him in the world was the way of abiding.
Jesus said, “Abide in me… And I will abide in you…and through God, you will bear much fruit.”
Friends, Jesus knew the challenges of abiding his disciples would face, and they were not that different from ours. His prayer and his hope was that they might remember: When things are going well, or we are on a roll, the invitation is to abide. When questions overwhelm and grief, loss, and tragedy come close, the invitation is to abide. When the bounces of life (golf) don’t go our way or we lose confidence in our ability to can get up and face it all over again, the invitation is to abide.
Growing up in Alabama, my mom hosted a charity golf event for the Alabama Institute for the Deaf & Blind. One of my favorite people to watch was a pro by the name of Charlie Boswell. While Charlie had 28 titles to his name, there was one thing that distinguished him from most of his peers. Charlie, having been injured serving in the armed forces, was legally blind. Yet Charlie played golf quite successfully for many years with the help of a sighted caddy.
I can remember following Charlie‘s group and I can see his caddy standing next to him, getting his body oriented in the right direction, telling him the distance, and the wind and the break and the hazards that were in front of them.
Charlie’s caddy would give him all the data he needed and Charlie would choose a club, slowly make his turn and send the ball through the air. As the ball landed – often pretty near where they’d planned – they would grab each other arm-in-arm and walk down the fairway to play the ball wherever it lay.
Y’all, if we are honest, we are all walking a little bit blind through this life with one another and with God. The good news of the gospel is that, like Charlie’s caddy who was there every step of the way, Jesus promised we would never be on this journey alone — that arm-in-arm we would be able to play the course of life in front of us with God at our side.
Ok, I can hear you asking, well tell us then, how do we abide? Well, it’s as simple as G.O.L.F:
G: Get grounded – Abiding means creating places in your life to hear the spirit speaking to you. Read scripture, pray, be still, as the psalmist suggested, and remember that God is God and you are not.
O: Open your heart/eyes – We may be a little blind, but the signs of grace and God’s presence are all around us. Remember that we see now, as Paul said, through a glass dimly, but we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
L: Listen – God never said hardship would not come, only that God would be with us. We have to create moments in our lives where we can drown out the noise and hear what the Spirit is saying.
F: Find fellowship – Find your cathedral, church, or small group. Don’t walk this journey of life alone. Find a group of people who can encourage you in your faith and know that prayer matters. Check in on those you love and remember, it’s OK to not be OK, but it is not OK to believe you have to do life alone.
Yes friends, the wisdom of abiding is really as simple as GOLF.
God’s will for us is that we might experience the abundance of what can be by walking with Jesus to bear the fruit of God‘s kingdom on this earth.
Abide in Christ my friends, and Christ will abide in you, and you will never walk alone. AMEN.
