BERNARD SHUFORD

• Tiger wins… That’s 14.  Nothing against Jack, I just want Tiger to clearly have the records.
• Tarheels are loaded.  Loaded.  Kansas might get to eat a little crow next year.
• Smoke stinks this year.  That’s the negative part.

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1. 40 yard dash – 8 seconds 7.55 seconds (7.67 uphill, 7.43 downhill, June 16, 2008)
2. Run / walk workout three mornings every week (I have a freshly repaired heart, so I have no excuses.)
3. 160 pounds body weight (That’s about 8 or 9 down from right now.)
4. 2 chapters of Bible reading daily (yeah, it ain’t much, but it’s more than I do now.)
5. Write one good song every month (this means I’ll write three to four bad ones, as well…)
6. Pray for four people every day that are NOT part of my church or family (I’ll probably record these on the blog for accountability. Y’all keep me straight.)
7. Play golf at least once a month
8. Fish. I have my license and a very willing son, so I have no excuses.

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Today, we did it.  We buckled down and faced it.

14 clubs, a white ball, and a bottle of water.

My first “on course” golf in well over a year.  Almost two years but not quite, I don’t think.

I’ll be sore tomorrow, but I didn’t have ANY pain during the round.  The King Cobra Titanium driver that my buddy Gene informally donated to me is a killer club.  Wow.  I’ve NEVER hit drives that straight or that long.  I didn’t have a scorecard, so I lost track of the yardage pretty easy, but I was scaring the group ahead half to death, purely by accident.  Of course, the one time that there were trees close on the left, I promptly hooked it straight into them, but that was only once.  The 9th hole is a monster downhill, and I’ve never reached the creek before.  Iactually got under the ball a little too much and got it too high, but I still came WAY too close to the creek with an incredibly straight drive.

I’m a King Cobra convert.  One way or another, I’ve got to keep that club.  I’ve NEVER felt as confident with a driver in my hand as I did today.  It was shocking.  No slice.  No slice.  Can I repeat that?  NO SLICE.  Not a single time did I curl a ball off to the right.  You have no idea how good that felt.  First hole is a 250 yard or so par 4.  I nearly rolled it onto the green.  It’s downhill, so the distance isn’t incredible, but just the fact that the ball went where it should was amazing.  It felt so good.

The next trip is sure to be a driving disaster, but be that as it may.  It was fun today.

I believe that golf as a Christian has a bigger purpose than hitting a ball.  Piper’s Christian Hedonism is indeed a hard thing to wrap our fingers around without getting absorbed in ourselves, but I really believe that Travis and I played golf to glorify God today.  Was every thought “spiritual”?  No, we were playing golf.  But we were genuinely enjoying our time together; genuinely enjoying life, and we were at peace with God and each other in doing so.  I truly believe that the Father looked down at our “father / son” time and was delighted and glorified.

Joy in Christ – joy in all things.  Joy for the glory of God.

The question is, can I glorify God with golf when the driver turns right and the putter won’t roll ‘em?

That, my friend, will be where the rubber meets the road.

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I miss playing golf.  I love golf.  The game grips me.  It has wrapped me in its tentacles since I first learned to hit a ball while in college, back in 1988, at Pensacola Christian College…  I love the feeling of a well hit ball.  I love to hit a good 5 iron and see it journey 170 or so yards.  Maybe 190 if I’m really lucky.  Well, at least I could do that five or six years ago.

I’ve aged.  I’ve had open-heart surgery.  I’ve been busy.  My spinal column doesn’t serve me well like it once did.

Even with a 6 year old who LOVES the game, I’ve not played in over a year.  Close to two years.  Wow.

Much of it is a fear of how bad it will hurt the first time I go out.  I’m sure that I will suffer for a long time as a result of something around 60 full swings and 40 or so putts.  A couple of casual hits in the yard seems to have a pretty good impact on my pain level for a week or so.  I already slam down 3 ibuprofen in the morning with alarming regularity just to control the pain from my normal activities.  I can only imagine the Sunday morning after a real round of golf.

But I hope to take the boy out for at least a short outing this Saturday, if the weather holds.  We’ll probably golf terribly, but I bet we’ll have fun.

I see the same mess in my spiritual life.

I fall out of spiritual “shape”.  I get knocked down in a few battles, take some hits, get hurt, and sit back to recover for a while.

The only problem is that I never re-enter the game.  I continue my recovery for so long that I forget how to do what I was doing before.  I lose interest, even though that intimate, continual, loving relationship with Jesus Christ is the most awesome experience I could ever have.  I get distracted, and I become afraid of being hurt again.

I spiritually flop on the couch and wonder why the spiritual grass in the spiritual front yard is such a mess.  I drive a dirty spiritual car and can’t understand why it isn’t clean.

Being hurt is no excuse to quit.  We gotta keep walking.

Step up.  Anybody else have this kinda mess?

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