Can you believe it?

As I write this, it is snowing harder than I’ve seen it snow virtually all winter! Nine days ago it was 24 degrees Celcius (nearing 80 Fahrenheit), and today the wind-chill sits at -20 Celcius. In fact, last night at the Edmonton International Airport, we set a record overnight low for this date— an ambient temperature just shy of -12 Celcius.  I should be golfing, but instead I’m snow-shoveling! Such is the so-called “shoulder season” of the Canadian Prairie. It’s never quite predictable; in fact, it’s not even close!

Oh well... My mind can still remember golfing (I think). And for this month’s blog, I think I’ll give you a personal golfing testimony of mine. After all is said and done, you can connect the dots yourself...

About ten years ago, I went golfing on a Monday with my Anglican father-in-law. He was one of those renewal Anglicans, who tended to believe the Bible (instead of reading it in order to doubt it). Anyway, we had a friendly golf competition going on Mondays, when both of us (as pastors) had a day off. And on this day, we were hanging around another Prairie town, a few hundred miles east of my present snowy location— Montmartre, Saskatchewan— on one of those traditional sand-green, “pay-on-your-honour” golf courses that small town Prairie life is all about.

And, I’m pleased to report that even by the second hole, I already felt things were going to go my way that day. On this short par 5 with a pronounced valley in the middle, my t-shot could not have been any better. It was bullet-straight, and with the sun-hardened fairway and the vale in the middle, I thought the ball would carry for between 250-275 yards. The good old rector, on the other hand, got some decent distance, but pushed his t-shot left, ending up in the rough just shy of the farmer’s field to the east. I wasn’t sure about his location, but I sure looked forward to finding my ball, sitting high and pretty with a great look at the hole.

I went to where I thought it would be, and found nothing. I then went to where I hoped it could even be under the best possible circumstances. I found nothing there as well. Next, I went to where I thought it must be, with less carry than I’d hoped. But I still found nothing. It was rather baffling. Meanwhile, the parson had already taken his second swat, driving his ball even closer to the green. But, I, on the other hand, walked around puzzling, and even envying those professional golfers who go nowhere without a public gallery and t.v. cameras that can immediately identify where their ball has gone. I went over and over old ground from every seeming angle— looking down gopher holes, if necessary.

Ultimately, I gave up— all the time wondering how an excellent drive could have robbed me of a perfectly good golf ball. And I was just about to reach into my bag, in order to take a drop, when I got challenged by that vicar, father-in-law of mine...

“Before you drop a new ball, don’t you think you should pray to find the old one?”, came the question.

Now you have to understand that although I was a pastor, I wasn’t one to pray lightly. I had been taught to pray for important things, big things, critical things— for world peace, for somebody dying, for protection from nasty road accidents— but never for a sport. And certainly never for a golf ball. After all, I had lots of golf balls. I could afford to lose even a nice one in (argh!) some stupid, unforeseen hole in the middle of the blasted fairway!

But the vicar pressed his case. “You’re a father. What would you do if your son came to you and said, ‘Daddy, I lost my ball!’”?

The rector, whether he knew it or not, had me by the theological throat. Denying that I would help my son (the vicar’s own grandson) probably wouldn’t look so good. But the truth was, I would help my son find his ball. And yet, somehow, to admit this and yet reject my present need for help, would (by extension) be suggesting that I had more love for my son than God did for me, which could not possibly be true.

“Well, I would help him find his ball”, I finally admitted.

“Then, don’t you think God would be interested in finding your ball?” came the inevitable response...

What could I say? And on that golf course, on that summer’s day, I know what C.S. Lewis felt like when he prayed to receive Christ. He felt like the most reluctant convert in all of England. And I felt compelled to pray the most reluctant pastoral prayer of my entire career.

“Daddy, help me find my ball. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

I paused and opened my eyes. Turning northward toward the t-box, shining as obviously as Venus at twilight, was my golf ball— right in the middle of the fairway. I didn’t know how I missed it. In fact, I couldn’t have missed it, unless I was supposed to.

The skeptics will say I would have found it if I’d just kept going. The cynics will say while I shut my eyes to pray, my father-in-law tossed one out. But it was my ball.

And, if I would be allowed to “connect the dots”, I would say that a loving God, who does indeed love His children enough to find lost things— coins, sheep, even prodigal children (Luke 15)— revealed the location of this golf ball at precisely the right moment. 

For the lasting result of that one morning of golf some ten years ago has been that I (and others to whom I have been able to share this story) have never been afraid, ashamed, or reticent to pray for small things ever again. God is not ashamed of small things— of small mercies, or of small prayers. He is Lord of it all, and Lord of the small. 

That day I understood a little better how a man who calmed the seas, who prayed that believers might all be one, for the kingdom to come, or for the dead to rise from the grave, could also have no difficulty teaching his disciples to pray for such small things as their “daily bread”.

That day, I saw a direction connection between the dimples on a golf ball, and the love of God.

© 2008 David MacKenzie                 You can reach me at 4regency@telus.net