It’s amusing that golf clubs can mean the things we swing or the places where we swing.
Both have invaluable lessons for us - particularly the former.
Getting the right golf club for your height and preference has become an art and a science. It’s part of what makes the duffer’s world go around.
Once you get the perfect club, birds chirp and the skies are blue. RIght? Wrong.
The golf club can be the beginning of all misery. It’s responsible for the slice, hook, topper and the innumerable heartbreaking hits that you wish you had over again. Or, is it?
Here you think the cherished club was going to turn you into Tiger Woods and it instead turned you into a crazed tiger in the woods looking for your ball. You trusted that it would help you drive the ball further than the Golf Channel ’s television cameras could record and instead you throw your driver farther than your drive.
But the crescendo of the madness is when you start telling your buddy what he’s doing wrong and how to tweak his swing. His neck gets red. He begins to grip the club like’s it’s your neck.
How is it that we can see everyone’s problem and within minutes blow our next swing? Is it simply because we can see, just like the Golf Channel’s camera, from the outside looking in? No one can walk around with a huge mirror next to them. We can’t see our mistakes even when everyone else can.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: Judging, and even well-meaning and unwelcome counseling, can turn another’s neck bright red. First, let us take the club out of our own eyes so we can see well enough to take the club out of someone else’s hands.
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
Matthew and 7:1-3 (NIV)