ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605100017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: The Back Pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
It was a tight ball game. Tied up at the end of regulation. Go-ahead runners on base.
The batter bounced up to the plate, obviously a little nervous.
She swung the bat a few times in a tight arc around her body.
Then, still gripping the base of the bat, she brought her hands up in front of her face, closed her eyes and said a two-second prayer.
The idea of athletes crossing themselves before free throws or kneeling in prayer before a game is pretty commonplace these days.
But this particular prayer struck me because the ballplayer was about 12 years old.
While I suspect that some professional ballplayers try to call attention to their Christian piety in violation of Jesus' admonition in Matthew 6:5-6 to pray in secret, I'm confident that wasn't the case with this young ballplayer.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that one so young - in so tense a situation - wasn't thinking at all about whether anybody noticed her supplication.
I presume she asked to get a hit.
But, that wasn't to be. She was out. Her team lost the game a few minutes later.
Now, I'm an advocate of prayer by youngsters. But I wonder how a 12-year-old evaluates the relationship of such a prayer to the result that followed.
Does she conclude God didn't hear her prayer? Does she decide that there must not be a God? Does she think she did something wrong - maybe an uncharitable thought about a parent earlier in the day - that kept God from doing what she wanted?
Does she think God liked the other team better than her own?
I'd bet that none of those would be what her religious mentors would want her to conclude. I bet they'd say that God's ways are mysterious and that God knows best. There must be a reason, they'd say, that her team lost.
It's true, of course, that an occasional loss is a good lesson for players in recreation league sports. None of us are winners in every aspect of life all the time, so we have to learn to deal with defeat and disappointment. That's one of the reasons we let our kids play.
But 12 seemed to me a young age to have to learn such a hard lesson about prayer - summed up memorably by the Rolling Stones as "You can't always get what you want."
Those of us who pray - and polls in the Roanoke Valley and the nation indicate that includes most of us - have to develop a split personality about the process. We believe God is omnipotent, is concerned about us, hears us. But sometimes - for no apparent reason - God's will is not our own.
In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Jonah is swallowed up by a great fish trying to escape God's command to preach repentance to the people of Ninevah. After he is disgorged and goes to that city, Jonah becomes angry with God when the people do repent and the promised destruction of the city doesn't follow.
God is characterized as asking Jonah - a little sarcastically, perhaps - if he knows better that God.
For Christians, the model of such a prayer comes from Jesus. On the night before his crucifixion, Christ is described as praying: "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."
As we all know, the "cup" - his crucifixion - was not removed.
So, while it is perfectly human and natural that we should offer up such prayers, most of us eventually come to the conclusion that God seems much more responsive to prayers that don't seek some personal advancement or goal.
Perhaps that is because we have seen too much abuse of the prayer for personal gain - the TV preachers who deal in greed, saying "send me $1,000 and God will bless you abundantly with a raise, a car, a new house."
When those preachers' so-called "prosperity gospel" fails to deliver the promised blessings on their donors, the blame is always on the poor sucker who sent in the $1,000. He lacked faith, he was insincere, or he had some hidden sin.
Those "theologians" never consider that there may be some prayers that God finds selfish or inappropriate. Mark Twain satirized the type in his scathing "The War Prayer," in which an angel asks a congregation to consider the implications of their prayer for success in battle.
Now, the little girl at that softball game wasn't asking for the slaughter of her opponents on the field. She just wanted a hit. She wanted to win the game.
But such prayers do have corollaries. Somebody else would have to lose.
So, perhaps, mixed in with lessons about hitting, base running and fielding, sandlot softball also provided a lesson in prayer.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 linesby CNB