The greater our God, the smaller our fears.
"Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10
When I was fourteen, I decided to strike out on my own and join a baseball team of strangers. Up until then, I had always played on teams with friends and family.
So it was a big decision. To go out on my own.
No friends. No family. No one that I knew.
I rode my motorcycle down to the ball fields the day of registration and signed my name on the paper. I had no idea who I would get as a coach. Who I would play with or even what position I'd be able to play.
But it was new and exciting and fresh and I was giddy with the possibilities.
The first day of practice I showed up thinking I would know some of the people I would be playing with. I didn't.
Because of the way my birthday fell, they put me on a team with people who were one or two years older than I was. As we were warming up, I was at the batter's box, hitting grounders to the infield. The pitcher was doing a pretty good job of lobbing the ball over and I was doing pretty good at calling out where I was going to hit the ball to. In fact, I was pretty dang proud of myself. Here I was on a team with boys way out of my league and I was calling out balls like I did it for a living.
I had just called out third base and hit a ball over there when I felt a whack on the back of my leg.
"What in the world!" I thought as I stumbled back. It was a pretty good lick. I turned around and standing there shaking a wooden cane at my face was a little old man. I learned later that his name was Coach Cephas Peters. And he was a living legend. But at that moment in time, he was just some random dude that had sucker punched me with his cane.
"What's wrong with you!" I yelled. And then that's when I knew that something was wrong. Coach Cephas had been born with multiple sclerosis in a time when there was no treatment and no hope. By this time, he was well in his 70's and drove around a little golf cart. He could still walk, but just barely and he couldn't talk very well. Each word was a struggle for him to say.
Coach Cephas had been dealt a bad hand at life. No one thought he would live to see his second birthday. No one thought he'd go to school. No one thought he would ever amount to much in life. That he would become a burden to some nurse in a nursing home and forgotten by everyone.
But that wasn't who Coach Cephas was. He never thought he was useless. He never thought he wasn't important. And he sure enough never thought he was worthless.
And he wanted the whole world to know just what he could do.
Every day, Coach Cephas lived and breathed baseball. He became a coach while he was still a teenager. At first people laughed that a baseball team was coached by a cripple. Imagine their surprise when Coach Cephas' teams started to win. Boys were lining up to play under Coach Cephas. Coach Cephas was a master at strategy. He studied each player, each team, each tournament bracket until he knew it by heart.
And then he would teach his boys.
Which usually meant you'd get whacked by his cane.
"Stopped bending your knee!" he yelled at me after whacking me with his cane. I was dumbfounded and asked why. "Because you can't plant your foot! If you don't plant your foot then you won't get any power out of your swing and you'll be hitting softball grounders the rest of your life!" Over the years, I came to know Coach Cephas as a kind, caring and passionate coach.
You see, some of us may be born different, but we all share the same Creator and we are all made in the image of God. And if we can just see past the hurts and pains of others, maybe we can learn to stop bending our knees and start putting power back into life.
PASTOR TROY CONRAD IS MINISTER OF THE FARMINGTON UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. EMAIL: [email protected].
Religion on 08/17/2016