LifeLink Devotions for Tuesday, February 18, 2025

When I was in sixth grade I found an old golf club in machine shed on the farm our family was visiting. It had a bamboo shaft and was called a Mashie. And it was left-handed, like me. I had seen golf on television and so I swung the club a few times, trying to imitate Sam Snead. I was hooked. I became convinced I wanted to be a golfer.

I knew we could never afford clubs or the green fees at the local course, but we lived north of town next to the church and there was a lot of space. I knew I could set up a small course with two or three holes, but what would I use for clubs. As I looked around the garage my ingenuity kicked in. There in the corner was a wooden croquet set. They were a little short, but they would be perfect. They even had their own pull cart. But every one of them had a flat end on both sides. If only one end was slanted.

I knew we still played that game and needed at least one end flat, but I figured both ends flat limited the mallet’s versatility. So, I took my dad’s power saber saw and cut off each one end of the four mallets at a different degree of slope to duplicate the loft of golf clubs. After smoothly sanding them, I was ready to test them.

They worked! I set up my holes and I was playing golf. I couldn’t wait to show my dad what I had done. You can imagine how that went.

Croquet mallets were not designed to be golf clubs. They may serve the purpose for a time, but they do not allow for the full development of golf skills. Plus, they become less effective at their original purpose because their balance is now goofy. The designer knew what He was doing when he applied the rules of physics to the creation of the croquet mallet needed to strike the ball correctly.

So it is with the world. The Designer knew what He was doing when He created the earth and everything in it. His infinite wisdom was used to design it all, and if we follow His wisdom it will be good for us. Listen to what King Solomon says inProverbs 8, verses 22 and 32.

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old…And now, O sons, listen to me: blessed are those who keep my ways.”

The “me” in that verse is Wisdom. When God created the world He designed it all to reflect Who He is in all His infinite knowledge and power. Every day the sun would come up and then set again, so precisely that we set our clocks and calendars to it. Every star, planet, and moon held in perfect orbit with the exact amount of gravity and rotation. And that’s just a start. The wonder of the human body and the intricacies of the various systems required to keep it alive are beyond explanation. It is the wisdom of God that created and maintains it all.

So why do we think man has a better idea? Why do we try to reshape the original design to fit our desires? I think the best example of this is marriage. God’s wisdom built into all creation was that one man and one woman would join together and bear children, forming families that would continue to uphold and apply the wisdom of God. Yet today God’s wisdom has been sawn off in varying degrees in an attempt to fulfill an unintended purpose. What a slippery slope it has become.

My friends, if we want to be blessed by what God has given us, then we must use it all as He intended according to His wisdom. Otherwise we can never go back.

Pastor John