About ten years ago, while serving as a campus minister, I received a handwritten letter from a church member named Walt McDonald, who I had not previously met. He introduced himself as a former professor of English at Texas Tech, elderly, and suffering from cancer. He suspected that his time was short and had hopes to speak to college students about the gospel while he had the strength. As I later discovered, he was not just a former professor, he was a former Air Force pilot, author of over 1,800 poems and other works, one of Texas Tech’s honored professors, and the 2001 Texas Poet Laureate.
I invited Walt to deliver a series of talks to the students in our campus ministry, and they were eloquent and powerful talks. To this day, I can vividly recall certain details and the effect they had on me. Two things impressed me most: First, that a man so widely applauded would relate to me and everyone around him with such humility. And two, that a man with such an accomplished past didn’t go on and on about it. He spoke instead about God’s grace and the hope held out in the gospel.
On the last evening that he spoke, Walt gave me a couple of his books. Occasionally, I’ll pick one up and read a poem or two. My favorite of his poems is one called: Faith is a Radical Master. It’s a baseball poem in which “God bats on the side of the scrubs.” The author describes himself as a weak player, late in the game, on third, and “wondering how I’ll wobble home” if someone gets a hit. “But there,” Walt writes, “there in the box is God….” God points his bat toward center field and “all my family in the clouds go wild, all friends I’ve loved and lost…tossing their gloves like wild hosannas.”
Since I’m not big on baseball, it took me a while to understand the poem. But I think I finally get it. It’s the expressed faith of a man who has come to know God as one who acts on behalf of the weak and the wobbly, bringing them home with rejoicing. Paul wrote, “We boast in the hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). A few verses later it becomes clear that such a boast is not a boast in one’s own giftedness or goodness; it is the rejoicing that goes wild with hope when a person realizes that God bats on the side of the scrubs—yes, for the weak and wobbly sinner.
Running Home
About ten years ago, while serving as a campus minister, I received a handwritten letter from a church member named Walt McDonald, who I had not previously met. He introduced himself as a former professor of English at Texas Tech, elderly, and suffering from cancer. He suspected that his time was short and had hopes to speak to college students about the gospel while he had the strength. As I later discovered, he was not just a former professor, he was a former Air Force pilot, author of over 1,800 poems and other works, one of Texas Tech’s honored professors, and the 2001 Texas Poet Laureate.
I invited Walt to deliver a series of talks to the students in our campus ministry, and they were eloquent and powerful talks. To this day, I can vividly recall certain details and the effect they had on me. Two things impressed me most: First, that a man so widely applauded would relate to me and everyone around him with such humility. And two, that a man with such an accomplished past didn’t go on and on about it. He spoke instead about God’s grace and the hope held out in the gospel.
On the last evening that he spoke, Walt gave me a couple of his books. Occasionally, I’ll pick one up and read a poem or two. My favorite of his poems is one called: Faith is a Radical Master. It’s a baseball poem in which “God bats on the side of the scrubs.” The author describes himself as a weak player, late in the game, on third, and “wondering how I’ll wobble home” if someone gets a hit. “But there,” Walt writes, “there in the box is God….” God points his bat toward center field and “all my family in the clouds go wild, all friends I’ve loved and lost…tossing their gloves like wild hosannas.”
Since I’m not big on baseball, it took me a while to understand the poem. But I think I finally get it. It’s the expressed faith of a man who has come to know God as one who acts on behalf of the weak and the wobbly, bringing them home with rejoicing. Paul wrote, “We boast in the hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). A few verses later it becomes clear that such a boast is not a boast in one’s own giftedness or goodness; it is the rejoicing that goes wild with hope when a person realizes that God bats on the side of the scrubs—yes, for the weak and wobbly sinner.