Jeff Baker playing third base for the Chicago Cubs

 

WHAT YOU DON'T SEE CAN HURT YOU! Neal Pollard   Mark Hanstein told me this week about a bizarre baseball incident from earlier this season involving a Major League baseball player who also happens to be a member of the Lord's church.  Jeff Baker, playing third base for the Chicago Cubs, was set and apparently ready to field his position when Dodger catcher Russell Martin hit a searing line drive past him that missed him by only a few feet.  Baker never reacted until after the ball went past him, when he apparently heard it.  Jeff was suffering from an ocular migraine.  Carrie Muskat, who has covered the Cubs since 1981, spoke with him after the incident.  He said, "Instead of getting pain and a headache, it just knocked out the vision in my right eye." Then he said, "I heard it, I saw it for a second barely.  I didn't move. I don't know why, to be honest. I didn't see it very well. I didn't pick it up. I looked in the dugout at [athletic trainer] Ed [Halbur] and he asked me if I was OK, and I said, 'It's not getting better'" (muskat.mlblogs.com).  Martin was hitting a little, round missile that could have given Baker more than a migraine. Sometimes we cannot see the future consequences of present actions.  Teens, when dating and pressed by hormones and confused by talk of love, can go too far and reap physical, emotional, or spiritual consequences they never saw coming.  Parents can improperly prioritize the goals they have for their children, and inadvertently teach them that something else is more important than God.  Husbands or wives can allow seemingly "innocent" relationships with the opposite sex to blossom into something unwholesome and sinful.  What you don't see can hurt you! Sometimes we cannot see the power of our influence upon others.  Our words are overheard and they can have a deeper impact on the hearer than we know.  Be they negative, gossiping, biting, hypercritical, suggestive, or profane words, those words can be permanently etched in the memory of the receiver.  Our actions and habits are picked up by the impressionable, the young person, the new Christian, or the newcomer.  What we do or do not do can lead them away from the Lord, though we never saw it coming.  What you don't see can hurt you! Do not let what you cannot see be your undoing.  There's more than your literal noggin at stake.  There is more than yourself at stake.  Let's make sure we can see clearly the power of all we say and do!