Most people pick spring, summer, fall, or winter as their favorite season. When asked, I usually say fall is mine.
But my true favorite season? The one I love even more than fall? The one whose coming I anticipate more than I look forward to the relief from roasting-hot temperatures that fall brings?
Baseball season.
Every March, a beautiful, magical thing happens. Baseball diamonds all over North America come alive with the sights, sounds, and excitement of Major League Baseball games. The bat makes contact with the ball right in the sweet spot, and, crack! A 99-mile-an-hour fastball thwacks into the catcher’s leather glove. The constant, rumbling crowd noise roars to ear-splitting decibels in the space of a heartbeat.
The umpire half-crouches into the action at the plate, then flings his arms to the sides, palms down, signaling “safe.” Forty thousand fans rise to their feet as one to watch a ball soar over the wall.
Baseball season.
For almost eight months, baseball fans glory in the excitement and the triumphs. They cringe or fume at defeats and unfair calls. No matter which team they’re fans of, they hope anew that this year, their team will win the World Series in October.
Especially if they’re Cubs fans, like me.
That’s because while the vast majority of teams make at least periodic appearances in the World Series (baseball’s ultimate contest), we (I say “we,” because with Cubs fans, everything is very personal) haven’t made it to the Fall Classic since 1945. We haven’t won it since—ahem—1908. Yet every year, we flock back to the stadiums to watch our beloved Cubbies try, try, try again. In the words of Winston Churchill, we “never, never, never give up.” Past failures don’t matter. This could be the year!
Why do we do it? Why do otherwise logical, reasonable men and women continue to support a team that has such a dismal record in some respects? Why do we remain so fiercely loyal? Why have we come to exemplify the word “longsuffering” in a world where instant gratification is the highest value?
In a word: Love. We love our Cubbies. And because our love is authentic and unconditional (has to be, for Cubs fans), it sticks around. Loss after loss. Disappointment after disappointment. Year after year.
It’s extraordinary. It’s noteworthy. It’s…kind of biblical.
I admit, maybe the Bible doesn’t exactly mandate loving the Cubbies (though I’m sure I could bend some verse out of context), but it does describe how real love works. Real love is longsuffering (that means really, really patient); it always believes; it always hopes; it always endures. In other words, this is the kind of love Cubs fans need.
It’s also the kind of love we need if we want to love not just a baseball team, but our fellow human beings.
Yes…them. The ones who have provoked you. Disappointed you. Failed you so many times in the past and come up so short that you feel like you know better than to think anything’s ever going to change.
How can we do that?
By loving them like many people love the Cubbies. Not by denying their past record of failures, but by believing that the goal they’re striving for is within their reach, even if it takes a really long time. Not by abandoning them when the failures outnumber the successes, but encouraging them to keep going. Not by believing, “If it hasn’t happened by now, it’ll never happen,” but by choosing to believe, “This could be the year!”
Please understand that I’m not suggesting we tolerate sinful or abusive behavior from our loved ones and fail to protect ourselves. What I’m saying is that when someone is trying, day in and day out, even if he or she has only imperfect success…when that person exerts every effort, maybe not perfectly, but pretty doggone consistently…
Well, we have two choices. We can choose to stop loving, abandoning our loved one if not physically, then emotionally.
Or we can make the harder choice. We can choose to continue loving with the real kind of love. We can purpose to love someone not because of his or her performance, but despite it.
If our love falters when our loved one fails, it wasn’t real love in the first place. It was based on whether or not we got something out of the deal. It was “I’ll love you as long as you please me.”
Genuine, authentic love isn’t like that. It makes the choice to continue loving, no matter what the loved one does or fails to do. It encourages for the future instead of condemning because of the past; it endures pain and disappointment (though not necessarily certain behaviors) for the sake of continuing to love and remain in relationship; and it chooses to look forward toward the success that is possible instead of looking backward toward a history of failure.
Our love may not be able to cause our team to win (if it could, the Cubs would defeat the Indians in the World Series in four games). Neither can it cause others to change (only God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, can do that). But when we make a deliberate decision of our will to love others in the absence of their perfection, we’re loving them the way God wants us to. Which, by the way, is the way He—blessedly, wonderfully, and undeservedly—loves us.
Maybe, just maybe, this will really be the year.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7—Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (NKJV)