Easier Than You Think (Friday Devotional)

 

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.

- Ephesians 2:8-9

All day long Tuesday, I was a bundle of nerves. That night, my son Andrew’s Little League team was going to have their first game of the season. As one of the coaches, I was especially invested in seeing them have fun and play well, but it wasn’t the team’s success that had me sweating. What was making me anxious was having to pitch.

You see, at this age level, for the first half of the season, the coach is responsible for pitching to his team, and I had learned two things in our practices leading up to the game. First, the 46 feet from the pitching rubber to home plate felt a lot further than I’d expected. Second, 6 to 8-year-olds have reeeeeally small strike zones. Even after several weeks of practice, I still wasn’t consistently giving the kids perfect pitches—and now I was going to have to do it in a game situation, with their parents watching (and judging) me.

So by the time we got to the field, I was tense, enough so that I didn’t even eat dinner. I tried to have fun while we warmed the kids up, but my eyes kept shifting over to the mound. My moment of reckoning was at hand.

Then, just a few minutes before the game was supposed to start, I saw the coach from the other team—a man who’s been doing this for years—throwing some warmup pitches to his catcher, and I noticed he wasn’t doing so from the rubber, or even off the mound. In fact, he was a good six feet in front of where I’d been practicing.

I approached him and said, “Hey, sorry, I’m new at this. Just checking, are we supposed to throw off the mound or can we scoot closer?”

He chuckled. “Technically you’re supposed to throw from the front edge of the mound. But don’t worry too much about it…they don’t care where you stand, they just want the kids to see some good pitches.” After all that concern and anxiety and neuroticism, it turns out I’d been worried about nothing—my effort wasn’t what mattered at all.

That lesson reminds me of the fundamental truth we remember and rejoice in next week as our eyes turn to the cross of Christ—for all the import we place on our behavior, it isn’t ultimately what matters to God. What we do isn’t really the point.

God sent Jesus to die on the cross because our salvation isn’t something we’re capable of earning—it had to be given to us. Our righteousness isn’t the point, his is. Our works aren’t the point, his grace is.

We make it all too difficult, too complicated, sometimes—and too self-focused. So as Good Friday approaches, let me encourage you to take your foot off the metaphorical rubber. Scoot up a few feet. Relax and take a deep breath, because it’s not all about you anyway. Jesus has done what’s needed—and because of him, there’s grace for you.