The next morning, my mom and I went to the general orientation, met a few of the other students competing for the scholarship, and sat in a waiting room as they called us one-by-one to interview.
After a few minutes, it was my turn. Right away, I could tell that the panel of professors and admissions folks had read my application and seen that the two major trends of my life were baseball and faith. After a couple of generic questions, one of them looked at me and asked: “If you woke up tomorrow with a terrible injury that meant you would never be able to pitch again… could that be the act of a loving God?”
I froze. Simply imagining the possibility of never pitching again was troubling enough to my teenage baseball brain, but theologizing on top of that seemed inconceivable!
But then, all of a sudden, I remembered the words of the Apostle Paul from Romans 5.
Twenty years later, the words of the Apostle are still far more inspired than anything I can come up with on my own. And, even better, they’re still giving me hope when an impossible question leaves me frozen.