The Worst

TITLE: The Worst
DATE: May 2, 2019
TEXT 1 Timothy 1:15  - ESV- 15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

Never in the course of my ministry did any Voter’s Assembly or Board of Governors offer me $23 million dollars a year. As far as I can remember, nobody  ever offered me a seven-year-contract at 23-million per. And, just for the record, if they had offered that amount, I would have remembered.
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Well, I mention that 161-million dollar figure for a specific purpose. That amount is the figure which is being paid to one of baseball’s record holders: Oriole 1st baseman Chris Davis. At the moment this devotion is being written Chris holds two such record. They are:

1. THE LONGEST HITLESS STREAK ever recorded in professional baseball history. Folks, that’s EVER.
2. Chris’ second record is another of dubious distinction. Chris has the worst batting average for any qualified player in the majors. He finished last season with a 168 batting average. This year hasn’t been better.

The last time Chris got a hit was September 14, 2018. Since then Chris has stepped up to the plate 48 times... and then having waved his bat at the ball a couple of times, he ended up sitting back down… close to 48 times.

Now I’m not a personal confidant of Chris, so I don’t know how all this is effecting him. He says that ”no one is more frustrated than” he.” Maybe so….

• …but I bet there are  a whole lot of guys in the minor leagues who  think they could do better than Chirrs if the front office just gave them a chance.
• … and I’ll wager there are a whole lot of fans who think the team would be doing better if they  spent some of those millions in getting a slugger to play the 1st base position.

Truly the rest of the devotion could be spent speaking about how everybody thinks they know how to run a baseball team better than the front office…and almost everyone thinks they can do a better job at running the universe than does the Lord. Yes, we could have fun talking about that, but we’re not going to.

Instead I would like to look at something St. Paul said about himself. In our text up above he referred to himself as “the foremost sinner.” Now there is no question Paul did some seriously bad things, but I think it’s a push for him to call himself “the worst sinner ever.” That’s like Chris Davis bragging he’s the worst baseball player ever. He may be the worst hitter ever…but he’s not close to being the worst player ever.  

The point is that Chris does things wrong  and is in need of grace from the front office…just like Paul did things wrong and was in need of grace from Jesus Christ Who had come into this world to save sinners.

And may I say that both you and I are on that same list… the need for the Savior list… not the bad baseball player list. We may not be the worst of sinners and we’re certainly not the best at saints, but we are sinners and we regularly need the grace which comes from the Christ.

THE PRAYER: Dear Lord, grant that I may rejoice in the grace which comes to me through the Savior’s blood. May I acknowledge my sin, my helplessness and rejoice in all Jesus has done. In His Name I pray. Amen.

The devotion for today was inspired by various recent news articles. For further reading you may wish to go to this site: and the article written by Jenn Gidman at  ,: https://www.newser.com/story/273653/mlb-player-just-set-a-record-no-one-wants.html?utm_source=share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=def

The music which introduces and concludes our devotions was written by Guy Baumann. He alongwith  three of his brothers perform on the album: The Baumann Brothers which may be ordered here: http://thebaumannbrothers.com/index.html