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February 2011
As I left on my recent sojourn across the Atlantic we were standing on the brink of a momentous occasion, not seen for almost a quarter of a century. I fully anticipated that the retaining of the Ashes in Australia would at least make the sports pages, if not the front page globally. How wrong could I be; not a sentence, not even a passing thought was given by our American cousins, but what else should I have expected from the land that hold a ‘world’ series championship in a sport where only teams from the USA enter.
I did my best to bring illumination into my family of the joys and delights of the gentle art of cricket, but the more I tried to explain, the more bewildered was the look on the faces of those present. It was then that I remembered the perfect explanation of the fine game, written some years. So for your edification I include it in this article, author unknown;
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!
Yet still they did not understand – What does it take for some to get the point?
If this is true of the glorious game of cricket, how much more is true of the wonderful gift of grace that we have received in Christ, so the writer of John makes as clear as possible when he says; “for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3;16)
Nothing complicated, nothing to clarify, God did it all for us. What is easier to understand God’s grace or cricket? Answers to the editor.
Melvyn
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