It's All About Coming Home

For an Arizona boy like me March means two things, NCAA March Madness and MLB Spring Training baseball! As the sun comes out, the weather gets warm, and school takes a break for two weeks there is no better place to spend an afternoon then at the ballpark watching your favorite team get ready for another exciting baseball season as you chow down on a hot dog and peanuts. This time of year, now on a mission, can be a little tough as I think back to those good ol' days. But as these feelings come back to me and as the itch of spring fever has hit, just as the snow also hits here in Dillon uh!, I think about how America's past time compares to our lives.
   As a player in the game of life we all started at home with our Heavenly Father, just as a baseball player starts his journey at home plate.  We look forward to the future and the hopes that we might have the chance to hit a "home run" in life. As we stand there anxiously waiting we wonder what life will throw at us. Whether the fast balls or curve balls of life that come our way will result in good, a base hit, or bad, a strike out. As we have our first successes of life, or hit, we make it to first base. Now our whole goal is focused on making smart choices on the base paths, earth, to make it home. We have other people, batters, and obstacles, great pitching or fielding by the opponent, that will get in our way at times and try to keep us from making it to our final destination. But as we continue to work our hardest, rely on our coaches and team mates, family, friends, and our Savior and as we make an effort to run fast, never look back, and endure to the end, we can make it back home to where we started. We will score a run, eternal life, as we step on home plate and hear the umpire, Heavenly Father, yell "SAFE!" This will be the ultimate reward for our hard work and our team's support.
    “In my beginning is my end…Home is where one starts from…In my end is my beginning.”-T. S. Eliot