Living Monstrance

Since I was a young boy, I loved sports, especially basketball.  I even read the sports page every morning when I was a little kid.  I think I learned all about fractions from batting averages and earned run averages.

As I got older I really worked hard at basketball.  I loved the game.  Sometimes, as a teen, I played twice in a day.  I played all year round, and it became my only sport.

I ended up playing in high school for 4 years.  Pretty impressive, huh?  But there was one problem: I could never get comfortable in the plays that we ran.  I don’t know what it was, but I never seemed to get into full synch with the offense that we ran.  I always felt like something was off.

One day at practice, we ran through a play, and when I caught the ball, I turned to the basket and in one really quick and smooth motion put up a three-pointer: swish.  The coach blew the whistle.  “Next play,” I’m thinking.  He says to me, “That’s a great shot, Jerome…

But that’s not the play!”

You know, I think that’s the sense that the disciples had at the time that the Lord called them.  Peter and James and John with their fishing boats.  Matthew sitting at the customs booth.  I think they had put a lot of work into what they were doing.  In a way, they liked it.  But, inside they had a sense that they were running the wrong play.  They needed the Coach to blow the whistle and tell them.

Do you have a sense that you’ve taken a great shot, but it’s not quite the right play?  If so, it’s a good time to listen to the Coach.