Life is like Golf

In the golfing world, yesterday may have been one of the most exciting and long awaited days in the sports history. "The Masters" golf tournament is the most prestigious championships in all of golf, but no more important than to the man that won it. As he walked up the eightieth fairway, I couldn't help but wonder what was going through his mind. You see, Phil Mickelson was known as the best golfer in the world who never won a major championship. In forty-seven tries he placed in the top ten eight times and three of them were previously placing third in The Masters, yet he never could win the big one. He developed a reputation of choking in the last rounds never able to finish on top of the leaderboard.

So yesterday, as he walked up to the green of the eightieth hole tied for the lead and a twenty foot putt to win the tournament, you could say he had the weight of the golf world on his shoulders. "Something was different today," he said in an interview after the round, and you could see that in his face as he walked up that long fairway. He smiled as he relished that moment in what normally would be a stress filled frown. "I just knew it was my day." he said. Can you imagine the hunger, the thirst for victory Phil had to have at that moment, yet at the same time fighting the feelings of fear and the haunting times of failure down deep inside? But "this was my day," he said.

One of the last things Jesus said that most of us look over was "I thirst". I think we would have reacted just like the Roman soldiers did as they raised a rag filled with water and vinegar to Jesus' month. Did Jesus thirst for water for his physical body or did he thirst for the father even in his time of death? In his time of defeat with the weight of the world on his shoulders I believe the symbolism was Jesus was still hungry to serve. He thirsted not for water as we see it, but for the living water that his heavenly father could only give.

All of us have had failures and we have all walked down that lonely fairway of life not knowing if we would win or lose. But what brought Phil Michelson to that moment in time was not the many tournaments that he won in the past, but those that eluded him. Phil could have chosen this weekend to just say here I go again, and dwell on what could have been, yet he didn't, "today is my day" he thought. It's not about last week's tournament or yesterdays failures, but about this shot in life we have right in front of us. You see we can allow our failures in life and the weight of the world to do us in or we can just say, "Today is my day."

What are you doing today as you walk down your fairway of life? Are you hungry for God's blessings in your life? Or are you carrying the weight of your past with you each and every shot. In life as in the game of golf, it's not about your last shot it's about forgetting it and looking forward to the next. The question is, "Do you thirst enough?"

Greg Ryan is a best selling author of the Changing from the INSIDE OUT series. A powerful five step plan to better your life, get healthier, and have more energy! For FREE mini Course click here! http://www.resolutions.bz

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