As reported by Phil Rizzuto in a radio broadcast: When Ralph Houk was manager of the New York Yankees, baseball schedules were even more exacting than they are now, with double-headers almost every week. Occasionally a player would get sick of the grind and approach Houk, asking for permission to sit out a game. "I know how you feel," the manager would say genially. "Sure, take the day off, but do me a favor. You're in the starting lineup. Just play one inning. Then skip the rest of the game." The player would honor Houk's request--and almost invariably get caught up in the spirit of the game and play it out to the end.
An interesting solution, one that put the game ahead of all else and benefited both the manager and the player.
Marriage, like baseball, takes the full commitment of each partner to harvest good results. When one partner tires of the grind and folds, the consequences can be devastating. It takes both partners committed to the joy of the game to make a marriage work, a 100-100 proposition.
According to Dr. Phil, fifty-fifty unions are at risk for failure. The mindset denotes an expectation of a reward for enduring a period of sacrifice. The fifty-fifty principle results in score-keeping, certain to spark controversy, a heated, “Okay, it’s my turn now.”
The dictionary defines compromise, the basic premise of a fifty-fifty relationship, as a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; something intermediate between different things. This is the reason, according to Dr. Phil, that a fifty-fifty philosophy in marriage simply doesn’t work. But where decisions are based upon a 100-100 plan, i.e. what is best for the marriage rather than the individual, the marriage wins. And when the marriage wins, everyone benefits.
Is this true of our relationship to God?
In many wedding ceremonies, theologians remind the celebrants that marriage as God ordained, most resembles the union between God and the believer. I wonder if we fail to experience full joy in the Lord, because we approach our Faith with a fifty-fifty mentality. We serve God, read the Bible, pray, do our good deeds and all with the expectation that eventually God will reward us. When we believe God is slow on His part, we remind Him, “Okay, God, it’s my turn now.”
But, God in His wisdom encourages us not to tire of doing good things. He tells us, “I understand, you’re tired and want to sit one out. Tell you what, just get out there and bat a few times.” When we get back into the game, without expectation, our joy returns, a joy based on our relationship rather than service.
Oswald Chambers writes “The joy of Jesus was the absolute self-surrender and self-sacrifice of Himself to His Father, the joy of doing that which the Father sent Him to do.” Christ service emanated from his joy rather than service being a method to discover joy.
This is the unity God has planned for the believer from the beginning, the purpose for which Christ came, to reconcile the imperfect to the Perfect, the temporal with the Eternal. Our joy springs not from what we do for God, but from being one with God, a 100-100 experience.
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: (Philippians 2:5-6 KJV).
A graduate of Houghton College,
Rondeau has spent a previous career in the field of human services, often
engaged with families in crisis. She credits these experiences in human drama as
the edge in creating unforgettable characters. Furthermore, her prior work has
shaped her vision of a future world should current sociological issues remain
unchecked over the next several decades.
After more than thirty years in the Adirondack region of Northern New York, Rondeau now resides in Jacksonville, Florida with her husband Steve and their cat Duffer. When not writing, she enjoys theater, golf, and hiking.
She is a member of the Florida Writers Association, American Christian Fiction Writers, and several on-line writing groups. She is the owner and founder of Pentalk, a community of writers that features networking pages and a blog. Rondeau contributes a monthly column to her former community newspaper entitled, This Daily Grind and maintains a blog of the same name. Other blogs include Back in the Daze.
Also writing under the name of Linda Wood Rondeau, other books by this author include The Other Side of Darkness.
You may contact the author on Facebook, Linked In, Goodreads, or Twitter or visit her on the web.
The Amazon Kindle for the novel is : http://www.amazon.com/America-II-The-Reformation-ebook/dp/B008CGFVUI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1340191492&sr=1-1&keywords=l.w.+rondeau
Check out Linda's websites and her books!
Blessings
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