Talking About Baseball – A Single Eye

The highest single season batting average in the “modern era” (which is basically from 1900 forward) is .424 by Rogers Hornsby in 1924 when he played for the St. Louis Cardinals. If you are a baseball fan you know that was an amazing feat. Hornsby also hit over .400 two other times. To put this in perspective, the last person to hit over .400 was Ted Williams for the Boston Red Sox – and that was in 1941, 69 years ago.

Hornsby was a “nut” about taking care of his eyes. In fact, he didn’t go to the movies because he thought the moving pictures might be detrimental to his eyesight and he didn’t want anything to impair his ability to see pitches coming to the plate.

I wonder how we compare to Rogers Hornsby in the things we expose the eye of our minds and hearts to? In Colossians Chapter 3 we are exhorted to fix our minds on things above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God; and the author of Hebrews challenges us to look to Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. Just as great batters like Hornsby developed and maintained an “eye” for the ball, so Christ-followers are called to develop and cultivate an eye for the things of God.

There are a lot of things we can do with our eyes which are not sinful or wrong, there are a lot of things we can apply our hearts and minds to that are no more evil than watching a movie would have been evil for Rogers Hornsby. The question usually isn’t whether something is evil, it is usually whether something dulls our spiritual hearing and seeing, it is usually whether something is focused on Christ.

It is like the adage that the enemy of a great book is a good book. Am I investing my life in good things or in great things? Am I taking care of my “eye”? What’s my batting average looking like these days?