Your Dream House (4)

Thu, 3 Sep 2020

‘There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’ Revelation 21:4 NKJV

Dave Dravecky pitched for the San Francisco Giants baseball team in the 1980s. In 1988 doctors discovered a tumour in his pitching arm, and in 1991 his arm had to be amputated. In his book When You Can’t Come Back, he writes about his sense of loss.

‘I miss doing things with my own two hands, and—of course—I really miss baseball. There’s a scene in the movie Field of Dreams where Shoeless Joe Jackson—one of the eight Chicago White Sox players banned from baseball for conspiring to lose the 1919 World Series—said, “Getting thrown out of baseball was like having part of me amputated. I’d wake up in the night with the smell of the baseball park in my nose and the cool of the grass on my feet. Man, I did love this game. I’d have played for food money… The sounds—the smells. I’d have played for nuthin’.”’ Dravecky continues, ‘That scene had a powerful effect on me. I missed those feelings too. The feeling of stitched seams as you cradle a new ball in your hand… the sound of a bat cracking out a base hit. I’d have played for food money. I’d have played for nuthin’.’

We live in a fallen world where we lose limbs and lose loved ones. But Heaven will make up for all we’ve lost. We’ll be reunited with our redeemed loved ones, and we’ll have bodies free from sickness, pain, and every form of limitation. ‘There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’ One day you’ll live in your dream house!