So Close, Yet So Far Away

Nothing beats a day of sharing fellowship with great friends, accompanied by the crack of the bat—the sound that is the heartbeat of baseball. For two weeks, I had looked forward to this outing. It was not disappointing.

The 100-mile drive to Busch Stadium passed quickly as we shared conversation typical of a “guys day out” excursion. Severe weather had passed through St. Louis the day before, but the skies were clear for our arrival, and the sun was shining hot. A perfect day to watch the Cardinals play the New York Yankees.

Following lunch, we navigated our way to our assigned parking—a daunting task among the 45,000 other fans who were attempting the same. Dan had reserved us a spot relatively close to the stadium, and had his GPS to guide us through the red ant bed of cars and pickups crawling along, watching for markers of their assigned spaces.

“Go south…no east…maybe back to the north…no more to the west.”

The GPS finally announced, “You have arrived at your location.”

We parked, grabbed our bottled water, and joined the throng of people headed to the stadium—Cardinal fans in red attire, Yankees fans in gray and navy. The energy of the enthusiastic crowd pressing together at the ticket entrance was palpable. It was going to be a fun day.

When we saw the line to the escalators was exceedingly long, we decided to walk to our seats on the fourth level. My knees are shot, so my dear companions allowed me a couple of rest breaks on our long upward climb. Finally settled into our seats, I looked down on the field. Warm memories flooded my mind. In my youth, I was a good athlete and dreamed of making it to the Big Leagues.

 “Play ball!” the announcer cried out, and then, over the monstrous roar of the crowd, he added, “There are 44,500 fans attending today’s game!” Soon he was calling the game. “Strike three…you’re out,” or “It’s going, going, gone. Home run!” During the seventh inning stretch, one and all joined in a rousing rendition of the unofficial anthem of North American baseball—“Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” The organ played loudly, and the united voices of the fans swelled even louder. Fun, fun, fun! Finally, the words, “Game over!” and our team had won!

For the sake of my pitiful knees, we determined it would be best to take the escalator down to the ground floor, and filed into line with thousands of other fans trying to descend from the fourth floor. We enjoyed great laughter and recapped the game together as we waited in line.

Reaching the ground floor, we walked in unison with the pressing crowd out the exit, still laughing and joking. But after several blocks of walking, something didn’t seem right. Greg ran back to find out if we were going in the wrong direction, as Dan and I continued onward. When Greg caught up to us, we learned that we had exited on the wrong side of the field. But since we had advanced this far, we reasoned it would be just as easy to walk around the Stadium as it would be to return and start over. Surely that would be the shorter of two routes! Or, surely not. In hindsight, we nearly tripled our walk in the exceedingly hot and humid weather.

Spotting a rented electric scooter laying on its side, we took note of that possibility for our next outing. Our minds were preoccupied with how to make the return trip to our vehicle just a bit easier—all because we started in the wrong direction to begin with, and now were experiencing consequences for not paying attention. We were so close, yet so far away! Using GPS guidance, we finally made it to the car.

After arriving home that evening, I reflected on the great adventure of the day. I realized we did a lot more things right than wrong on our wonderful outing to Busch Stadium. Yes, we took the wrong exit, but our problem began when we tried to figure out a shortcut to the vehicle. The better part of wisdom would have been to return to the Stadium and go out the right side.

The Lord showed me a spiritual application to this story. In this great adventure of life we sometimes fall into step with the crowd who is headed in the wrong way because we are distracted and not paying close attention to our spiritual walk. We err by not asking for directions from the Lord before each day’s journey. Once we take the wrong exit from His path of life, we often choose a long and circuitous route back to Him.

How often do we find ourselves off His prescribed path, then try to figure out on our own how to return to the place we were? Please know that human reasoning cannot calculate a shortcut. Prayer, combined with the Word of God, is our spiritual GPS system. We must open our hearts and ears to Him. He is calling out, “Return to Me, and I will return to you,” (Malachi 3:7). Like the parable of the prodigal son found in Luke 15:11–32, we need to return to our senses and remember how great are the privileges of being a child of God. We should run—not walk—back into His loving arms.

Do you find yourself so close, yet so far away? If you’re wandering through the maze of life, drifting in the wrong direction, stop in your tracks now. Call to Him. He will answer. The way of return is to yield to God’s directions. He promises, “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left” (Isaiah 30:21).