Romans 3:3-4 “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.”

I’ve heard that character is who you are in the dark, when no one is watching. That’s a valid description in most scenarios, but I think character is also who you are when everyone is watching.

I flipped on SportsCenter recently, and one of the lead stories that day was that of Kevin Na, a PGA Tour professional. Fortunately for duffers everywhere, but quite unfortunately for him, Kevin had a really tough ninth hole at TPC San Antonio. After replaying the video to recount his strokes on this par four hole, he signed his card showing a sixteen. Yes. Sixteen.

Let that sink in a little. A professional golfer took a sixteen on a hole. He went from one under par to eleven over par in one hole. Pretty sure that’s a record of some sort…

In an interview afterwards, he said that one of his shots hit a branch and bounced back an hit him. As if getting hit with your own ball isn’t penalty enough, the rules call for a penalty stroke. Then, he swung one time and missed the ball altogether. Again, penalty stroke (though we hackers would probably call that a practice swing). He counted everything. Every. Single. Stroke.

There were three things that I noticed about that video clip that really stood out to me. First of all, standing in the woods and hitting through trees, the only person in the world that could know that the ball hit Kevin on a rebound is Kevin. Yet, he took the penalty, because those are the rules. Not only did that take courage, it was a significant show of integrity, of character.

Secondly, they showed him walking with his caddie toward the green (finally), and he was jovially laughing. He was fourteen strokes into a par four hole, and he was smiling and joking. “Not sure, but I think I’m somewhere between ten and fifteen,” he said to his caddie. There are duffers everywhere that would be breaking expensive clubs over one knee if they were “somewhere between ten and fifteen” on one hole, especially if they were miraculously one under par heading into that hole.

The last thing that really stood out to me was Kevin’s score on the back nine… a 33. That’s three under par for the back nine, those same nine holes that immediately followed his sixteen shot wonder. What an incredible show of fortitude!

We’ve all faced difficulties and trials, times when it would be easy to fold under the pressure. How we endure those difficulties speaks volumes about our character, and about the eternal hope we have. And that same confident hope allows us to regroup after a trial and “swing our club” once again.

Next time I’m tempted to use a “foot-wedge” from the woods, I hope I remember Kevin Na, and have the character he had when everyone was watching.

Grace and peace,

Delton

(This was sent as an eDevotion by my home church in Florida. You can subscribe to receive daily devotionals from Church @ The Springs by clicking here.)

Write it down

2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”

I recently finished reading a book about rituals.  It didn’t address them in the traditional context of “spiritual rituals.” Rather, it was talking about the decisions we make about how we spend our time that eventually become habits in our lives.

It’s an interesting premise: we all expend energy to complete the tasks before us.  Actions like good hygiene don’t require a lot of energy, while responsibilities like self-control can consume a lot.  But when something becomes a habit in our lives, it takes much less energy to complete it.

For example, as an adult, it doesn’t require any energy output on my part to remember to brush my teeth.  It happens almost automatically when I get up in the morning and before I go to bed.  But as a parent, I find myself reminding my boys to brush theirs almost every day.  I don’t really remember it, but I suspect that my parents had to remind me, too, until it became a habit.

Anyone who’s ever started a diet, or an exercise program, or a daily time with God can attest to the amount of energy it takes to establish a discipline.  Finding the daily motivation within ourselves is often not enough.  We find ourselves quitting almost as quickly as we began.

Rituals are different.  If we can be ritualistic about something in the short run, it can more quickly lead to a habit that requires very little energy to maintain it as an ongoing part of our lives.  Often, creating a ritual is as easy as putting it on our calendars.  The simple act of writing it down, committing to a specific time and place to complete the task, is enough to begin the ritual.

If we truly examine ourselves, I know there are areas in our lives that we’d like to improve.  We might want to lose some weight, or exercise more, or have that daily quiet time that we’ve been promising God, but our efforts at self-discipline have failed.  Why not try a ritual?  Commit to a time and place by writing it down, then do it.

My friend once said that you can tell a lot about people by their calendars and their checkbooks.  I think I’ll check mine today to see what’s really important to me. I hope I like what I see.

Grace and peace,

Delton