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NOVEMBER 19, 2010
‘BUT I CAN’T PLAY TO IT’
For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3, NIV)
I am on a quest. I am seeking the one golfer who will openly admit that his handicap is accurate and that he is playing
to it right now. Men, women, juniors, seniors, carrying a 3 or a 33—everybody seems to think the system has it all wrong.
It’s true that the way handicaps are calculated, they are weighted heavily toward our best play. Unless our game
is truly improving, we’re only meant to play to our handicap about 25 percent of the time. And even when our game is improving, we’ll eventually find a “bottom,” the place where
we too start complaining.
As golfers, our handicaps have a way of forming our identity. You may not parade your lowered handicap around the club,
but your friends sure will! There are others who are happy to announce that they’re not so good, declaring their 27 handicap as proof.
We find heavy irony, then, when it comes time to choose sides or enter a tournament, as we hear those oft-reprised
words: “I’m a ___, but I can’t play to it.” That is, we golfers give equal time to earning our identity and pushing it away!
Actually, there is a good lesson in this as well, at least for those who say they are in Christ and Christ is in them.
For we should make a habit of repelling any identity that tries to attach itself to us and mask the Lord of our lives.
Consider the apostle Paul’s powerful little statement to the Colossians, our verse for today. It contains two
mammoth truths:
- We have “died,” laying to rest our old self-focused, self-loving lives.
- Our new self is meant to be unseeable, wrapped as it is in Jesus.
The worlds we live in—those of family and education and business and recreation and social contact and even
church—attempt with frequent success to label us with identities that serve no lasting purpose. And sometimes we lay hold of these identities, duped into thinking they actually count. How much
better off we are when we push these lesser labels aside and let ourselves be known by the Savior who envelops us with His exceptional design for our lives.
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Jeff Hopper
November 19, 2010
Copyright 2010 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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