Lost in the Fairway

Losing a golf ball in a thick rough or wooded area hurts, but losing it in the fairway is a real killer.

How can a ball just disappear? Do invisible alien creatures in invisible futuristic golf carts zoom onto fairways, snatch up golf balls and carry them off to some outer-space research lab? Of course not! Sometimes a ball is lost in the fairway because a golfer’s ego won’t let him look for it farther back than he knows he hit it. Sometimes it is lost because it came to rest in a grass-covered depression. Sometimes a golfer walks or rides past a lost ball. Looking afar, he fails to see what lies under his nose.

The Bible teaches that human beings are lost until the Savior finds them (Luke 19:10; 2 Cor. 4:3). We Christians understand this truth. We were lost until Jesus found us. We understand, too, that Jesus commissioned us to share the good news of salvation with the whole world. However, we may fail to understand that many people are lost “in the fairway”; that is, in the center of our Christianized culture. Living in communities where evangelical churches flourish, where Christian television broadcasts enter their homes, and where Christians live nearby, why are so many people still lost? Perhaps, like golfers passing by a lost ball in a fairway, we expect to find the lost only in some faraway place like Africa or Asia.

© Jim Dyet