I’d had a long week at school, it was only Tuesday but all I could think about was getting through the day so I could go to Baum Stadium for the beginning of midweek baseball series- my saving grace and ultimate stress reliever. As I left the building of my last class I noticed the dark gray skies and immediately felt like bursting into tears. “Please God, no, don’t let there be a rain delay,” I thought as I rushed to my phone to check the radar. It’s sometimes inconvenient having my personal form of a stress ball rely on the conditions of an outdoor stadium. Throughout my college career, I grew to despise rain delays.
I’ve always felt like baseball holds a lot of life lessons deep within those ballpark gates. Just recently, I began noticing how rain delays are a lot like personal delays.
Just like my reaction to rain delays— "Now what? How am I supposed spend my night? My day is ruined— we have those same thoughts when receive delays in our daily lives— “God, what am I going to do? Where do I go from here? How are You going to fix this?”
Ezekiel 12 says:
21 Again a message came to me from the LORD : 22 “Son of man, you’ve heard that proverb they quote in Israel: ‘Time passes, and prophecies come to nothing.’ 23 Tell the people, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will put an end to this proverb, and you will soon stop quoting it.’ Now give them this new proverb to replace the old one: ‘The time has come for every prophecy to be fulfilled!’ 26 Then this message came to me from the LORD : 27 “Son of man, the people of Israel are saying, ‘He’s talking about the distant future. His visions won’t come true for a long, long time.’ 28 Therefore, tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: No more delay! I will now do everything I have threatened. I, the Sovereign LORD, have spoken!’”
We as Christians seem to see our delays as denials, which is completely untrue. We feel hurt and rejected when in fact, the situation wasn’t in our best interest to begin with. We stress over not getting that promotion we swore we deserved, over what colleges to apply to, over not getting the answer we wanted to hear. Truth of the matter is no one can take what wasn’t yours in the first place.
That job. That boy. That house. That “you fill in the blank”.
None of it was for you. His delays are the beginning of your answers. Your best is yet to come. This slight delay will be a distant memory and your future will be the best it’s ever been. His timing is perfect in all aspects, we just have to trust that everything will be okay. The enemy wins when we bow down in defeat and act like our lives have no answer. The same way the tarp protects the infield, God protects us from things that aren't for us.
Truthfully,I am beginning to enjoy delays in my life. There's a viral video going around the internet of the Denver Nuggets' mascot bringing a girl in the stands different size teddy bears. Each time the girl is happy but the mascot rushes off to find an even bigger bear for her. Like in Ezekiel, God is switching out our expectations and replacing them with His. I've begun to refocus my thoughts saying "Lord, if I would've been happy with that, I can't imagine how happy I'm going to be with the things that are made for me!"
It was during a rain delay that I sat down on a beanbag outside of the Redbirds’ batting cages and struck up a conversation with a girl named Abi. I can’t even begin to tell you what we spoke about, but somewhere along the way, that girl became my best friend. That one delay led us to countless others through the years where we created an epic game called Bucketball— using dodgeballs and a huge bucket to play a basketball game of sorts—, had silly photoshoots, made weird videos with our teammates, and put players into human sized Sumo suits to fight each other. It was through something that I hate, that I found some of the most joyous moments of my life.
Habakkuk 2:3 says “if it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay”
So let the rain pour and the water puddle up, because eventually, the grounds crew will appear to remove the tarp, clear the water and debris, and you get to play.