Today is Easter Sunday, and when I woke up this morning the first thing I thought about was baseball.

 It is not as though I think baseball is so important. From time to time my son and I talk baseball. We may get into detailed discussions about ERAs, OBPs, and RBIs, but usually Joel or I will eventually get around to concluding, “Well, it’s not like it’s actually important.” So what do I wake up thinking about on the anniversary of Christ’s resurrection? Baseball spring training.

 It’s disgusting. The things I believe are most important are not the things to which I always give my best thought and energy. It’s one thing to say what I value most. It’s quite another to consistently live as though it’s actually true.

 But let me tell you what happened today following my early-morning baseball thoughts. I did not get up and turn on the TV. I did not open up the sports section of the Sunday paper. No, I got ready for church. Then, as the first rays of a fiery red sun were burning through the morning mist, Donna and I drove across town to the early Easter service at First Plymouth Church.

 The pews were filled as Ottorino Respighi’s haunting and glorious “Pines of the Appian Way” prepared us to contemplate the story that still amazes: the shocking discovery—so completely unexpected by everyone—that Christ’s tomb was empty!

No more appropriate response to that story has ever been created than brass, strings, percussion, organ, and chorus offering up Handel’s “Worthy is the Lamb” and “Halleluja.” But I was moved even more, I think, by the hymn singing of the congregation. Or maybe it was just that, when I tried to sing, I realized how close to tears I had been all along.

Seldom have I experienced more meaningful worship, and at least part of the reason for that may have been my clear sense of unworthiness. After all, Easter for me had begun not with praise to my risen Lord—not with a hymn or a prayer—but with thoughts of nothing more important than sports.

It’s not that I think I should never again think about baseball. Solomon said there is an appropriate time for many things in life, but not every time is appropriate for all those things. Sleeping is a necessary part of life, but the disciples should not have slept on the evening of Jesus’ arrest. It struck me that my thinking about baseball this morning was a similar case of thick-headed, misplaced priorities.

My experience goes to the heart of what the story of Christ’s passion is about. It is the ultimate revelation of the bottomless depths of our unworthiness and the bottomless depths of God’s love. Earlier in His ministry, Jesus had said to the disciples, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Matthew 9:12). They apparently had no clue He was talking about them. Often, I am clueless too.

On the night of Jesus’ arrest, Peter, James, and John couldn’t bother to stay awake with Jesus in the garden. Later at the trial, Peter could not bring himself to admit he even knew Jesus. Matthew’s account is stark: “All the disciples deserted him and fled” (Matthew 26:56). Though the disciples had not yet grasped it, they were sick indeed. They were the ones for whom the doctor, Jesus, was about make the ultimate sacrifice. They—and I.

On Sunday morning, one of the first things the angel at the tomb said to the speechless women was, “Go quickly and tell his disciples” (Matthew 28:7). The slow-witted, cowardly followers had deserted Jesus, but He had not deserted them. This is the message of Easter. We must not miss this: In our irresolute, stumbling attempts to follow Jesus, we may at times be little more than deserters, but he does not desert us. Not ever.

So I pulled it together, got myself to church, and experienced once again His marvelous grace—so undeserved, so endless, so necessary.

B.W.