Seated in front of my TV last week, I watched Tiger Woods make his final tournament walk up the 18th fairway of the British Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. In great pain, he would finish over par, unqualified to play on the weekend.\u00a0\u00a0One of the very few ways I can relate to Tiger\u2019s finishing walk comes from a different sport.\u00a0\u00a0When my baseball days had given way to semi-pro softball, and finally to church-league, slow-pitch softball, I played my final game.\u00a0\u00a0Standing on second base after a frozen rope double, I watched the younger batter hit a line drive between infielders,\u00a0\u00a0As I headed to 3rd base the teen-age 3rd base coach was waving me home.\u00a0\u00a0My body said, \u201cGo!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0But my mind said, \u201cDon\u2019t even think about it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0As I tried to stop at full speed, I heard a loud pop.\u00a0\u00a0My hamstring said, \u201cYour playing days just ended.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Eventually, we all get to the end.\u00a0\u00a0I wish I had been present when my Dad preached his final sermon just a few weeks before his death – faithful and finishing well. I haven\u2019t finished preaching yet – presently in my 27th Interim Pastorate – but I know it will come someday, hopefully not accompanied with another pulled hamstring. When it does, I want to be able to agree with that great moral and spiritual athlete, Paul, who said he had \u201cfought\u00a0the\u00a0good fight . . . finished\u00a0the\u00a0race . . .\u00a0kept\u00a0the\u00a0faith\u201d (2 Timothy 4:7).<\/p>\n
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Seated in front of my TV last week, I watched Tiger Woods make his final tournament walk up the 18th fairway of the British Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. In great pain, he would finish over par, unqualified to play on the weekend.\u00a0\u00a0One of the very few ways I can relate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3153,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3152\/revisions\/3153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}