Never Moderately Important

Rick Kirchoff, Clergy Coaching Network

Those of you who are golfers may remember Gary Player, who, in his day, was one of the best in the world.  Over his career, he accumulated nine major championships on the regular tour and six Champions Tour major championship victories, as well as three Senior British Open Championships on the European Senior Tour.

When Gary Player was competing, people would constantly come up to him and say, “Gary, I’d give anything to be able to hit a ball like you!” And Gary would usually nod and smile.

But one day, things hadn’t gone well in a tournament. He was frustrated. And he was tired.

And somebody said, “Gary, I’d give anything to hit a ball like you.”

Gary lost his usual tact and politeness  He said, “No, you wouldn’t! You would like to hit a ball like me if it was easy to do it. But it’s not easy. What you’ve got to do to hit a ball like me is get up at 5:00 in the morning and go out to the range and hit 1,000 balls. Your hand starts to bleed, and you go into the clubhouse and you wash off the blood and you slap on a bandage and you go out and you hit 1,000 more balls. And you do that day after day, week after week. That’s what it takes to hit a ball like me.”

The truth is, nothing great ever happens without practice and training and sacrifice and dedication. And the same is true in the spiritual life.

C. S. Lewis said something that is so profound, and yet, so simple: “The only thing that Christianity cannot be for you and me is moderately important.”

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