Thankful for the Little Things

By Scott Cernek, HARVEST HILLS CHURCH

Something has changed now that the Cubs have won the World Series. Life is different now. The sun shines a little brighter. The moon seems a little bigger and the air a little fresher. We Cub fans have been transformed from Loveable Losers to Thankful Winners. This of course, is very fitting for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday we are about to celebrate. I am sure thankful that the Cubs have finally won and have given Cub fans something to finally really be thankful for with this baseball team. This may be a little shallow, but there was something almost spiritual about their winning the last three games of the series to secure the Championship for the first time since 1908. It all started when they had to fight and claw to stave off elimination and win game five by a score of 3-2. Game six was a much easier win for the Cubs as they jumped out to a 7-0 lead early and won the game 9-3 setting up a wild and wooly game seven for all the marbles.

There have been so many memorable game sevens in professional sports history that I couldn’t wait for the game to begin. We even started our Wednesday night Bible Study an hour early so we would be able to watch this historic event. The game started out with a bang as the Cubs centerfielder led off the game with a homerun over the right field fence. The Indians, however, tied the game at one in the third inning and the battle was on. The Cubs answered with five runs over the next three innings to take a commanding 6-3 lead into the eighth inning. You probably know the story from here, the Indians scored three runs with two outs in the bottom of the eighth to tie the game, and after a scoreless couple innings it was 6-6 and moving on into dreaded extra innings. The Cubs game alive in the 10^th as they scored two big runs and then held off the Indians in the bottom of the inning to win 8-7 and throw the proverbial monkey off their backs forever. The Cubs are World Series Champs. I never thought those words would come out of my mouth. The older I got the more I started to believe that for some reason the Cubs were never going to win it all, but alas I was wrong. What a way to enter the Thanksgiving season this year.

At our church service on Sunday we were talking about the things that we are thankful for, and how every day should be a day of Thanksgiving for a Christian. Some people mentioned they were thankful most for family, some for the faithfulness and salvation of God through faith in the Lord Jesus and His death and resurrection, but nobody mentioned the Cubbies, which is probably a good thing. I have to remind myself that they are just a baseball team playing in the twenty-first century here in the good old USA. Somehow they seem to be a little more than that this year, and I am really thankful that they finally won it all. They seem to be a great bunch of guys. In fact, I can’t seem to get the smile off my face when I think about their victory.

Psalm 136:1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. I am thankful to the Lord for so many things this year, a wonderful wife, a great church, magnificent children and grandchildren, a great country, and for the fact that my long-suffering baseball team has finally won the World Series.  How cool is that?

Until next week, God bless and Happy Thanksgiving!