I read this morning a newspaper story about a man who took a baseball bat into a bar and tried to kill his wife’s lover. What a terrible use of a baseball bat. For those of you who haven’t experienced it, one of God’s gifts is a baseball bat hitting a ball square in the grooves. Try it if you haven’t, no matter what your age, and if you have it is a feeling that stays with you forever.
The newspaper story was awful, but not unusual — a man or woman misusing a tool that is meant to bring pleasure. I got to thinking how often I have misused the tools and gifts God gave me, and how meditation is a perfect opportunity to inventory those tools and put them to their proper use — the purpose for which God bestowed them on us.
Grandma Danny knew the true purpose of the Bible (read yesterday’s Pew). It is never to be used as a weapon or an instrument of hate. If one believes that the Bible is an instrument of God, then when should it ever be used for anything other than love? Exclusion, judgment, injustice, and discrimination are not the instruments of God. To use the Bible toward those ends is not God’s way.
In A Few Good Men the character Daniel said, “I can’t think without my bat. I think better with my bat.” What tool do you need to serve God’s purpose for you, if you don’t possess it, ask him and he will provide.
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