DayBreaks for 09/27/11 – Good Advice from Mickey Mantle
The Mick
And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life. – Matthew 25:46
This simple little verse from Matthew 25 carries two huge truths: there is an eternal life to come and there are two different natures to that eternal life. One is reserved for the righteous, one for the unrighteous. But either way…we are eternal beings after we’ve been conceived.
Mickey Mantle was my childhood sports hero. I didn’t know much about him at the time, other than he was a great baseball player who could hit for average and power, run like the wind, play defense and throw the ball like it was shot out of a cannon. Little did I know about his drinking and carousing – I would only learn about that part of the man later.
Because of his wild and largely hidden lifestyle, Mickey Mantle always expected that he would die very young. When he hit 60 years of age, he was rather astounded and he said, If I had known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself. He finally died in 1995 at the age of 64, but not before he became a born-again Christian through his old friend and teammate, second baseman Bobby Richardson, who became a pastor and shared the gospel and his faith with Mantle.
Mantle made the point well: if you know you’re going to live a long time, you want to take care of yourself. You, the real, inner you, will live for eternity. In carrying on with yesterday’s DayBreaks, Paul said he was being (continuous present tense) renewed daily. He prayed, he sang, he gave, he fellowshipped, he worshiped, he hoped…and God kept on renewing him as sure as the sun came up in the morning. Right there in prison where his liver, heart, kidneys, legs, eyes and ears were failing him, his inner being was strengthened in faith, hope, love, grace, wisdom, patience, thankfulness and joy. Your inner being can be renewed like that every day – regardless of where your outer you happens to be.
And, given the fact that we know we will live for eternity, shouldn’t we take better care to prepare the real us – the soul – for a very long life, indeed?
PRAYER: Give us the wisdom to make wise daily choices that will help prepare us to live in eternal life with You! In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Copyright 2011 by Galen C. Dalrymple.
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