Does God Care About Golf?

   For the past week, I have been serving as a volunteer at the McGladrey Classic, a PGA golf tournament that has been held here on St. Simons for the past few years. This is the 3rd year for this event, and it has had a successful run so far. My week started with training on Sunday last and ended with my being a spectator yesterday. In between I served as a walking scorer on Wednesday and Thursday and a standby on Saturday, to be used if someone was not able to perform their assignment on that day.

   Along the way, I met and interacted with a variety of people, almost all of them strangers to me at the time. From the ladies who chaired the scorers committee, to others who had the same assignment, to the ones who worked beside me on a particular foursome, to the golfers who made up our groups each day,  and to the spectators that came to watch. There were also the bus drivers on the shuttle buses that drove us in from the offsite parking each morning and the faceless voices on the radio from the control trailer that asked questions and wanted clarification of what data I might have entered into my handheld device for all the holes that I worked.

   Was all the effort to put on this tournament worth anything? Did God care about how it was run and who was the eventual winner? Did He care about the course and the weather? Maybe those are not the proper questions to ask.

   Did he care about the winner, a 37 year old journeyman pro golfer from South Carolina, who had played in 104 pro events over a multi year career and had never tasted victory in any of these? Did He care about the others on that final day yesterday, who came up short in their own bid for victory? How about the golfers who did not even make the cut to be able to play the final 2 days?

 

   Then there were the 1200 or so volunteers that came out to work. Did God care about them?

   How about the thousands of spectators who just came to watch, cheer and be amazed that men could actually hit the ball that far with that much finesse? Were they important?

   Thousands of people walked that golf course over the past week. Some kept the grass cut, some sold food in the concession area, some carried clubs for the players, some parked cars, some played and some watched. Were they on God's radar screen?

   The eventual winner, Tommy Gainey, won over $700 thousand dollars, but each one of those faces on the course this week are just as important as this pro golfer. They are winners too, when they realize the fact that God loves them just as much.

   A verse comes to mind: Romans 8:37 which states:

   "we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us."

   Does God care about golf? Perhaps not as much as some of us do, but He sure cares about all the people that were out there this week. He cares about them as a crowd of people, but more than that, He cares about each one individually.

   He cares about me and He cares about you.

   He cares about Tommy Gainey, too, and not just about the winning.