by Kevin Burton
What if God made baseball cards for us, but they weren’t about baseball? What if they were about our walk as a Christian?
Christian cards?
If you wanted to capture my childhood in a handful of images, one image would surely be of baseball cards. I still have all my baseball cards, though I don’t look at them often. When I do, they take me to another time and another place.
If I could slip back into that time and place, you’d have a very hard time dragging me back to 2026, I promise you that.
Those cards were a tangible representation of my great love for baseball. They depicted great men doing great things in my great, beloved sport, and quantifiably so.
Also, baseball was one of the few things my father and I could discuss peaceably. That’s another story for another time.
But what if God made a card like that for me, with an action snapshot on the front, and my statistics on the back? Would I be proud to line it up on a table with other cards, for all to see?
What statistics?
Maybe seeds planted and seeds watered as singles? Souls led to Christ as home runs? Time, talent and opportunities squandered as spiritual errors?
If a player made the all-star team, it would say so on the front of his baseball card. Would I ever get a little star symbol or trophy like that on my Christian card?
I’m on this road today having been in Psalm 39. Psalm 39: 4-5 is one of my memory verses, which in the NASB reads:
“Lord, let me know my end, And what is the extent of my days; Let me know how transient I am. Behold, You have made my days like hand widths, And my lifetime as nothing in Your sight; Certainly all mankind standing is a mere breath. Selah.”
This is King David acknowledging how small he is and how great God is.
I love that David writes “You have made my days like hand widths…” How far can you stretch your hand? How far does it go? What a great word picture of futility!
Now using hand width metaphorically to mean your influence, how far does that go?
Sometimes when I am rearranging the furniture and I don’t have a tape measurer around, and I’m being lazy and don’t go get one, I will use my hand width to measure whether a certain piece of furniture will fit into a certain space. Did you ever do that?
If so, did you ever get the measurement wrong? Hand width indeed.
Keep reading in Psalm 39 and you get to:
“Certainly every person walks around as a fleeting shadow; They certainly make an uproar for nothing; He amasses riches and does not know who will gather them,” (Psalm 39: 6 NASB).
Incidentally, if you find yourself cringing in despair to think what your Christian card might look like, consider that of King David.
Surely the action shot would be of David dancing with all his might before the lord when the ark of the covenant was recaptured and brought to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6), but the statistics on the back would not all be so glorious.
Your card and David’s if placed in the same pack, would have some similarities, no?
But let’s not leave Psalm 39 before we get to where Daivd went in verses 7-8: “And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You. Save me from all my wrongdoings; Do not make me an object of reproach for the foolish.”
If my life on earth, or yours, were ever summed up on a 2½-by-3½-inch card it might be embarrassing but it would not tell the whole story.
Jesus, by laying down His life on the cross made it possible for all my sins to be erased. Salvation through faith in Jesus means that if such thing as a Christian card could ever exist, all the negative stats would be erased.
The version visible in heaven would be different from what we see on earth.
As it is written in Psalm 103:12: (KJV) “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”
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