THE LITTLE GUY

"When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said, 'Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.'" (Luke 19:5, NIV)

With the famous seventeenth waiting to frustrate the world's best, The Players gets underway today.

All those top-100 players, and a lot of journalistic eyes at least are falling not on Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, or Retief Goosen. Not yet, anyway. They have yet to write their weekend stories.

Before that happens, it is the writers who must do the writing. And their prime subject this week has been Craig Perks, the 2002 Players champion who is getting a whole lot of attention for his bad golf.

In the past two seasons, Perks, whose five-year exemption for that surprising win is due to run out at the end of this year, has made just one cut on the PGA Tour in 22 tries. His record led one reporter to ask Perks point blank, "Do you feel like a fraud?" With questions like that, it is Perks, not Woods, who could use a yacht christened Privacy.

If you spend much time reading the Bible, however, you know just how much attention can be turned to the failing ones, the little guys. In the pages of 21^st Century newspapers and magazines and web sites, such stories are often semi-tragic. They send us down the "there but for the grace of God go I" path. But in Scripture, losers so often win. That is God's way.

One such loser was a diminutive tax collector named Zacchaeus. Despised by the people for his traitor-like role in exacting Jewish monies for Roman consumption, Zacchaeus had been dismissed by priests and laborers alike. There was no hope for him now. He had gone to "the other side."

But God never writes His stories when we think He should. He has this habit of waiting until "the weekend"—the eleventh hour, as Christ called it in one parable—to work His biggest miracles.

So long after Zacchaeus was written off by his countrymen, Christ showed up and called his name. He had big plans for the little guy. He was ready to rewrite Zacchaeus' heart.

In all of this, there are two lessons for us today.

First, we must not be so quick to judge a man, for in so doing we are also judging what God can do.

And second, we must not fail in our prayers for the salvation of friends and family. Their "weekend" may yet be coming. Christ's victory may still be theirs.

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Jeff Hopper

May 10, 2007

Copyright 2007 Links Players International

The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.