Some of you may recognize this title from a little movie titled A League of Their Own, where Tom Hanks is managing a team of women baseball players. In the midst of the movie one of the characters begins to cry and as Tom Hanks gets more and more frustrated with his situation he yells out, “there’s no crying in baseball.” What a great line, it is a line that even resurfaced on Sportscenter just the other day by one of the commentators. As I have been journeying through the book of Philippians there is one verse that keeps jumping out to me and it is found in the second chapter. It says, “Do all things without grumbling and complaining.” What the heck??? Are you kidding me?? Complaining is one of my hobbies!! I love to do this, I will complain in the winter that it’s too cold and in the summer that it’s too hot, it is one of the things that I am good at!
In all seriousness, I wonder what our lives would look like if we didn’t grumble and complain? Don’t you? I would bet the amount of words we use in a day would drop significantly. As I have thought about this, one thing that keeps coming back to me is the amount of complaining and grumbling Christians do. If Jesus gives hope, peace and joy, what do we have to complain about. It is very ironic to me that I meet more and more people out of the church that have a more positive attitude than a lot of people I have met throughout my career working in a church. What if as a believer we resolved to quit grumbling and complaining and lived with joy?? What would that look like? Instead of wondering what others can do for me, we looked out and really asked what we can do for them?? Just a few questions running through my mind.
I thought this was ironic cause you could take this a complaining about people who complain! i thought it was funny at least