SPORTS March 21, 2005 Issue

MORE THAN MUSCLE POWER

MARK SWINNEY

HERE IN THE UNITED STATES, thousands of baseball and softball players are enjoying the benefits of what is known as "spring training." It's a happy time of renewal, preparation, and strategizing for an upcoming season of competition.

Of course, it includes a lot of very hard work. In my second year at college, I found the baseball pre-season conditioning process could be grueling, but realized it could also be a great place to learn some life lessons. I was, as always, the smallest player on the team. Not even years of weight training would have transformed me into the six-foot-three giant I thought I wanted to be. So I applied some of the lessons in spiritual self-cure I'd learned in a Christian Science Sunday School and looked to God for strength and ability. And the results were, by my standards, phenomenal.

This is how I reasoned. Though a trainer might look at you as a physical being with some possibly serious limitations, God sees you as a completely spiritual being—created to express His nature and power. Jesus confirmed this when He told his followers, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" (John 14:10). And that was good enough for me. If Jesus could admit that the creative power to achieve satisfying results wasn't humanly personal, but found in God, I decided I had nothing to worry about. My true potential wouldn't emerge in the weight room. Power—real power—is a quality that God expresses naturally in everyone.

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