I love baseball. I can’t tell you the stats of every player or which team does what, but I love the game. I could watch it every day and never get tired. That’s why receiving the generous gift of front-row tickets right behind home plate at our local ballpark has been one of the highlights of my summer for the past three years.
This year, I was sitting in my leather-padded seat watching the opening moments of the game. My husband and baby son Timmy sat to my left; two friends sat to my right. The players were right there on the field getting ready at home plate, so close that if I had called out to them, they could easily have heard me.
Then I noticed that the players weren’t the only ones on the field. A couple of pigeons strutted around not too far from the plate, stopping now and then to peck at something in the turf. I found this amusing. While the ballgame was going on all around them (with 46,711 people in attendance), while important human things were taking place just yards from them, those pigeons just went about their pigeon-y business, oblivious to the spectacle.
That’s why I found it amusing—the incongruity of the pageantry of a sold-out major league baseball game juxtaposed against a a couple of pigeons who didn’t care.
They were a great illustration of how we human beings sometimes get too full of our own importance.
That’s one of the things about being a human: it’s really easy to focus on ourselves. We build ourselves up in our own minds until we deserve all the hoopla we surround ourselves with. We come to think we deserve the adulation of crowds of people (or at least the members of our family). Whenever we step up to the plate, people should take notice. Everybody should care.
When we discover that there are pigeons in our lives—that there are people who aren’t impressed with our greatness—we often become irritated. That person doesn’t appreciate me, we say to ourselves, and we feel that we are righteously angry.
There’s only one problem with that: we aren’t playing for the pigeons.
Josh Hamilton, one of baseball’s greatest players, played in the game that night. He stood at the plate while the pigeons ignored him. But He wasn’t playing for the pigeons. He wasn’t even playing for the fans either, really. Josh is a Christian, and he understands about playing for the Audience of One.
I wonder if you and I really understand that, and I’m afraid we don’t. Too often, we play for the pigeons. Even more often, we play for the people in the stands. Granted, we may need to serve those people in the stands, but they’re not our ultimate audience. Our supreme Audience is Christ. Or at least, He should be.
Mom, you’re going to be called to step up to the plate today. Several times, in fact. You’ll have to approach the plate repeatedly and take your best swing no matter what life throws at you. If your swing isn’t what the crowd is hoping for, there might be silence. There might even be boos. Either way, the pigeons won’t care.
What will you do then? Will you throw your bat to the ground and yell at everybody in the ballpark that they should have appreciated you more? Or will you focus on your Audience of One, knowing that He always loves and appreciates you?
On the other hand, perhaps you’ll do something the crowd likes, and they’ll cheer you. Will you run the bases and then stop at home plate, your hands in the air, acknowledging the crowd’s approval, but forgetting all about your other Audience?
Mom, think about Whom you’re playing for. It’s not the crowd. It’s certainly not the pigeons. It’s the Audience of One. The only One who really matters. Any cheers you get from those around you are just background noise—nice, but not all that important. What matters is what the Audience thinks.
Whom would He say you’re playing for today?
Colossians 3:23-24—Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.