…let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance… (Proverbs 1:5, NIV)
I found personal appreciation in Linda Ballard’s words yesterday about how she loves golf precisely for its difficulty. The challenge of the sport keeps us hunting for the next little improvement, the next scoring gain.
Do you know what’s even more fun? Linda and I are both past the age where this kind of thing should matter! We could be bunting the ball around, call it exercise, and take our satisfaction from the nineteenth hole. Many people play the game this way.
But while I’m all for recreation, I’m even more for trying to improve. So I keep picking the brains of golf’s helpful teachers, in the magazines, on TV, at the range, and on the course.
“Grow till you go.” I’m not sure where along the way I picked up that expression, but I’ve used it more than once around my fellow Links Players. I’m at the back end of the Baby Boomers, while many of them are the trailblazers of that generation. Either way, we’ve got helpful words for one another. And we should be listening, for there is so much more to learn.
My friend Tim Philpot, who tells his wonderful story here on the Links Players web site, assembled a group of men this summer in southern Indiana. It was a treat for me to be there, for the golf and for the fellowship.
While we were gathered, Tim presented a particular theme to these men: find older others. That is, we all—no matter our age—need to be looking to those who have gone ahead. We need to hear their testimonies of where God has taken them and how he has carried them through. We need to learn their strategies of life in Christ—how to forsake sin and practice righteousness, how to build and sustain a godly marriage, how to get to prayer when every hour in your schedule is full.
You see, we still have a lot to learn, even—as Solomon suggested in the opening lines of his Proverbs—those who are already wise and those who are already discerning.
Listen and learn. The wise will recognize that such a basic program still makes excellent sense.
—
Jeff Hopper
November 12, 2014
Copyright 2014 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.