Do you sense God’s pleasure? – Dave Shive
September 2nd, 2011
Note: My wife and I send out a monthly newsletter by e-mail. This is taken from our Sept. 1, 2011, edition. – DAS
It’s the summer of 1957 and I am in the kitchen of our home, a pastor’s parsonage in a little town about 90 minutes outside of New York City. I’m 11 years old, and indulging in one of my favorite summertime activities – listening to the Yankees on the radio (it’s hard to believe how much I now dislike the Yankees). My mother is ironing nearby. And now time stands still because my hero, Mickey Mantle, comes to the plate.
Mickey wore #7. Now if that isn’t theologically significant, I don’t know what is! Bible scholars often say that seven is the number of perfection. Mickey’s teammate, Clete Boyer, once said, “What does seven mean? It means Mickey Mantle.”
I stand still as I envision the Mighty Mick at the plate. He takes a powerful swing and breaks his bat. Over a half century later I still clearly recall my euphoric jubilation as I ran around the kitchen shouting to my mother, “He broke his bat! Mantle broke his bat!” I also can visualize her motherly smile at my childish exuberance. Back then I didn’t realize that it doesn’t take much to break a bat – that it’s usually a flaw in the bat that breaks it, not the power of the swing.
But the Mick could do no wrong in my eyes and pretty much everybody else shared that opinion. In the words of a teammate, “His aura had an aura. The way he walked, the way he ran, and the way he presented himself once he put on the uniform – he was a symphony. Ever hear Beethoven’s Ninth? The Ode to Joy? You see him hit and then you see him run, and it’s like going into the chorale.”
If you haven’t already guessed, I’m currently reading “The Last Boy” by Jane Leavy. It’s about “Mickey Mantle and the end of America’s childhood.” If I close my eyes, I feel like I’m eleven years old and The Mick is coming to the plate. Flies buzz at the screen door, my mother is ironing, and I stand mesmerized in the middle of the kitchen floor trying to imagine someone whose craft is so sublime, so perfectly executed, a person so elite in his profession, that one gropes for a way to tell others about it without diminishing it.
Apart from the nostalgia and wistfulness, I feel another more powerful emotion. It’s the sensation that engulfs someone who has seen Ray Allen hit a jumper, Bobby Orr make it look like he’s playing hockey against a bunch of junior highers, Lou Gehrig or Cal Ripken show up for work night after night, or actually heard Beethoven’s Ninth. It’s the feeling I got when I first viewed “Chariots of Fire” and heard Eric Liddell say, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”
I have just returned from getting my hair cut. The barber asked me what I did for a living. It’s always a challenge to try to explain my vocation to people, so I told her that I do a lot of speaking and teaching about the Bible. She said she could never do that because in elementary school her classmate passed out from nervousness and hit his head on the desk as he was trying to make a speech. I told her I had a similar problem when I was young but now I find public speaking very natural. What I really wanted to say was, “I believe God made me for a purpose, and gave me the desire to teach the Bible. And when I teach His word I feel His pleasure.” But I didn’t. She may have passed out and she had scissors in her hand.
We might all benefit from asking the questions, “For what purpose has God made me? What did He make me able to do well? Do I feel his pleasure when I do that thing?” If anything hits you out of my short journey down memory lane, may it be that God has a purpose for you, He has made you to do something well, and when you do it, you can feel His pleasure.


