“C’MON! You Stink! Why are you on the field?” These were the words one of the Christian brothers used during a softball game. And these words were not directed to someone on the other team. They were yelled at a teammate who had just made his second error, allowing the opponent to score a run. Some camaraderie, right?


For many years in prison, we’d formed Christian teams for softball. The goal was to witness to the other teams and to our fellow prisoners who watched the games. We were supposed to be good sports and act according to our profession of faith. Too often we acted exactly like the other teams. Instead of being witnesses of Jesus, our team couldn’t be distinguished from any other. Imagine the impact we could’ve had if we had encouraged each other rather than discouraged! What if we would say, “You’ll get the next one” rather than “You stink”? What if we cared more about winning souls than winning games? Imagine if we played with love. Let’s all do that in each of our day’s activities.