Swing Batter Batter

I don’t particularly like country music. I do like it now more than I used to (it’s much less cuunnn-ttttree than it used to be), but I make no real effort to search it out or to listen to it. The other day I was “browsing” the channels on TV and stopped on one of the country music video stations. The song Swing by Trace Adkins was playing. I really like the chorus, and I’m going to steal it for this post, although you should know that I’m using it in a way that it was not originally intended. (OK, OK, I like the song as is, too, and I really like the video).

Swing Batter Batter Swing Batter Batter Swing Batter Batter Swing
(Maybe in this case, the lyrics NEED the music. If you go here, you can click to a preview of the video and hear the song)

You may have noticed in the sidebar that I’ve started a new book – If You Want to Walk on Water, You Need to Get Out of the Boat by John Ortberg. It’s another one off Steve’s bookshelf. I’ve read one chapter, and so far I’ve found tons of little gems. Here’s one:

Failure is not an event; failure is a judgment about an event.
Wow. How true, and how odd that’s I’ve never thought of it like that before. We are constantly labeling our actions or ourselves as failures because we make a judgment about an event. We spend our lives living in a world in which society tells us what failure is – we allow the people around us to define failure for us, and tell us that we need to avoid it at all costs. We go so far as to believe that we, as a person, are a failure, because society defines an action or event that we have experienced as a failure.

• Society may tell us that we are a failure as a parent because our child is addicted or lost when really the greater success is that we continue to love this child even amid these seemingly insurmountable challenges.
• Society may tell us that our marriage was a failure when really the greater success, the blessing, in fact, is the life that followed the divorce.
• Society may tell us that the cancer treatment was a failure, when the success is actually the additional year of life that it allowed – when the success is the number of lives touched and changed during that year as people witness the presence of God.
• Society may tell us that the end of a job is a failure, when the success is found in the way we cope with finding a new career, and the triumph of a new career built on the ashes of the old one.

Think of Peter as he walked on the water. Some would say that he lost his focus on Jesus and sank – a failure. Ortberg goes on to say that Peter is the only one who “swung his bat.” He was the only one who experienced what it was “to do what he was not capable of doing on his own, then feeling the euphoria of being empowered by God to actually do it.” Then, when he sank, he was the only one who was able to experience the saving grace of Jesus after “failure.” Jesus was there for him – he picked him up when he was drowning.

Sounds to me like Peter didn’t fail at all – or at least his failure was much less than those other eleven who stayed in the boat.

Swing Batter Batter Swing Batter Batter Swing Batter Batter Swing