Number 12

When I was in my late teens and early twenties my friends and I played a lot of golf. We knew the people quite well at one particular course where we often played. On weekends, on which they required tee times, they would allow us to go off the back nine at the crack of dawn. We would finish the back nine before our front nine tee time and thereby be able to play 27 holes that day.


One particular Saturday morning we were on the tee at Number 12 by about 6:45 am, a short Par 3 of about 150 yards. It was a straight, unobstructed shot to a flat green with a extreme slope falling off one side of the green. We were playing for real score. No "mulligans" (taking shots over).

I stepped up and hit a beautiful high shot that looked as if it was going straight for the hole. Our excitement built while the ball was in flight as we anticipated the coolest shot in golf, the "Hole in One". I had never made a "Hole in One". I still haven't.

The ball did come down right into the cup...and bounced out very high, hitting on the green once before trickling slowly, tragically down that steep slope into the heavy grass below. I must confess that back in that day, at that moment, I was inventing new cuss words to scream at the top of my lungs. I probably woke up everyone in the houses surrounding Number 12! I made a bogey 4 on the hole where my tee shot had bounced out of the hole.

The rest of the day went great. I hit plenty of great shots that day and creamed my friends. But winning the game isn't the memory I take away from that day, and that's just wrong thinking on my part.

In my daily life I do this way to often. I dwell on the things I did wrong (sin and/or mistakes) instead of keeping my eye on the prize so as to be victorious in the end, when the "game" of life on this earth is over.

It's the enemy's plan to try to focus us back to what we have done wrong (things that we obviously can't go back and change, or take a mulligan on).

It is God's plan however to provide us forgiveness for our sin and give us healing and a way of correcting and moving beyond our mistakes.

Lets not dwell on what went wrong, but persevere on to the next place He sends us. Lets keep our eyes on the prize, because what matters is who we belong to at the end of the game, not how many bad shots we hit or bad breaks we encountered.

With our God, we don't need a mulligan!

Drop me a line,

Greg