{"id":3014,"date":"2023-09-25T07:52:08","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T11:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3014"},"modified":"2023-09-25T07:52:08","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T11:52:08","slug":"playing-a-round-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/25\/playing-a-round-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing a Round of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,<\/em>\u00a0click here<\/a>
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Golf has been played in Scotland for more than 500 years.\u00a0
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The earliest courses were built on \u201clinks land\u201d \u2013 soil-covered sand dunes lying directly inland from beaches.\u00a0
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Links golf is not easy.\u00a0 The ground is often dry and brown and hard.\u00a0 Bunkers can be cavernous.\u00a0
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Balls that appear to be perfectly stroked can bounce at odd angles and disappear into the rough.\u00a0 And the rough is really rough.\u00a0 Links courses are often bordered by gorse, an almost mythical vegetation that can seemingly cause balls to vanish.
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Then there\u2019s the weather.\u00a0
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Meteorology in Scotland can change in a matter of minutes.\u00a0 Cold rain may descend in the morning, followed by delightful sunshine at noon, blustery winds all afternoon, then a horizontal gale the following day.
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Traditionalists exult in the agonies of playing the ancient courses.\u00a0 \u201cThis is the way golf is supposed <\/em>to be played!\u201d they harrumph.
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U.S. course designers have by and large disagreed.\u00a0
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American golf courses tend to be neatly manicured.\u00a0 Bunkers are more like sandy depressions.\u00a0 The \u201crough\u201d may look identical to your front yard right after you finish mowing.\u00a0
\u00a0
Golf courses in the United States reward good play.\u00a0 If you hit the ball well, things will generally turn out well for you.\u00a0 Every summer the U.S. Open, in particular, attempts to frustrate the world\u2019s best golfers.\u00a0 But it can generally be said that a round of golf in the U.S. is an exercise in fairness.
\u00a0
A round of golf on a Scottish course, however, is more like a round of life.\u00a0
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Life is unfair.\u00a0 It\u2019s not easy.\u00a0 You can do everything right and circumstances may still seem to be arrayed against you.\u00a0
\u00a0
The ball doesn\u2019t always bounce cleanly in marriages, in parenting, in workplaces, at your doctor\u2019s exam, and in town hall meetings.\u00a0
\u00a0
That\u2019s why the opening salvo of the little New Testament book of James is so compelling:\u00a0
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\u201cConsider it pure joy, brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.\u00a0 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.\u201d\u00a0 (James 1:2-4)
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Obstacles are required courses in the grad school of life.\u00a0 They are the core curricula for human growth.\u00a0
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We can face them knowing that God is bigger than any of the circumstances we will face today.\u00a0
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His love is deeper than the most precipitous bunker.
\u00a0
And he definitely knows how to answer this cry of the heart: \u201cGod, get me out of this gorse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Golf has been played in Scotland for more than 500 years.\u00a0\u00a0The earliest courses were built on \u201clinks land\u201d \u2013 soil-covered sand dunes lying directly inland from beaches.\u00a0\u00a0Links golf is not easy.\u00a0 The ground is often dry and brown and hard.\u00a0 Bunkers can be cavernous.\u00a0\u00a0Balls that appear to be perfectly stroked can bounce… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3016,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3014\/revisions\/3016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}