TRAVEL BREAK DAY! Yesterday Rebekah and I decided to steer away from the rush home (so that I can turn around and leave again for North Carolina). So we stayed put in Greensboro. Rebekah went shopping with Zandra and Ed took me to an amazing golf course on Lake Oconee.

Typically, borrowing clubs isn’t exactly ideal. But Ed hooked me up with a TaylorMade set. Sweet. Oh. My. Goodness. I’ve long argued that equipment doesn’t make that much of a difference… but I may have to change my mind.

Or it may have been the idyllic setting of The Landing at Reynolds Plantation. Or the fact that the fairways have actual grass (how do you like that, Diamond Hill in Valrico?). Or that the greens ran true (another novel concept in my experience).

Regardless, by the time we got kicked off the course by a thunderstorm we had enjoyed 14 holes of most excellent golf.

WHAT’s THE BIG DEAL? I’m trying to understand what it is that I enjoy so much about playing golf. I do Okay, but it’s not that I’m that much of a threat to break 80. Then I don’t get upset when I mess up – I know that certainly helps. And I do manage to hit good shots often enough to get a thrill from that.

I honestly can’t put my finger on it. But when I manage to smack a pure drive so that the ball lands in the middle of the fairway, follow it up by dropping a long 7-iron ten feet from the flag, and then barely miss a birdie putt – like I did on #9 today – well, it’s a beautiful feeling!

LIFE-CHARGED? Does this have anything to do with the life-charged life? I don’t know – other than to say that I believe God wants us to have fun, to recreate in such a way that we lead well-balanced lives, and to honor God in the way that we play and have fun.

Because there’s nothing, no element or activity at all, in my life or yours that should be excluded from our moment-by-moment commitment to follow The Way of Jesus, and to invite the Holy Spirit to literally inhabit everything that we do.

And that includes golf.

At least that’s what I believe – DEREK