It's A Team Sport

   If you knew a little about baseball, and had walked up on Saturday to see the final three outs in the bottom of the last inning, you'd be scratching your head at Randy Morris' decision. His team was leading by a very comfortable margin and the opponents from Toccoa were down to their last out. It was the championship game to crown the best Little League team in the state of Georgia, and up to now it had lived up to expectations. It featured two really good teams giving each other their best.  Large crowds forced people to park some length away and walk, only to find the seating standing room only. One of the key differences was in the quality starting pitching, which has been abundant this summer for Northern. 

   So, with Jacob Pate having pitched the entire game up to that point and only allowing four hits Coach Morris walks out and pulls his pitcher. This is an interesting turn, to say the least.  What everyone then figured out was that Pate had reached the prescribed 85 pitch limit that is imposed on these young players to prevent them, or their coaches, from pitching them so much that they could be hurt.  

   So, Zac Cravens comes in, makes a couple of pitches, and the game is won.  It was a team win and in that regard the ending could not have been more perfect. 

   For me, one of the most critical pieces of Scripture in putting together God's plans for how we will be saved in Christ Jesus comes at the end of the classic chapter in Hebrews 11.  It begins by defining faith as something not seen, then goes on to describe the greatest heroes of that faith throughout history.  Only then it takes an interesting turn and tells how God links multiple generations together in order for a person to receive the promise coming to them:

"Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect." 

Hebrews 11:39-4 

   Now I truly do not know how this works exactly, but according to Scripture is seems God has shaped salvation, won by the death and life of His son Jesus, in such a way that we are all in this together.  Maybe we could think of it as a team sport.