RICHARD MAFFEO
Baseball cards and God

It’s been 40 years, but I still remember the fun we had collecting baseball cards. For a few cents, my friends and I purchased photos and playing histories of the sport’s greatest.

Skjold Photo

I kept mine safely in a shoebox. Whitey Ford, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Sandy Koufax . . . we treasured them, catalogued them and traded them.

As the years passed, my once compelling interest in baseball cards waned. Other things captured my attention. Without my realizing it, my revered Whitey Fords and Mickey Mantles ended up scattered across the bottom of my chest of drawers or on the floor beneath my bed. By the time I was 13, I no longer owned a baseball card.

Had I known then what I know now about the value of those cards, I promise you things would have been different. Leave them scattered around the house? Are you kidding? Some of those cards are worth several hundred dollars today. And to think I let mine gather dust beneath my bed!

Baseball cards have taught me an important lesson about the value of things often taken for granted. Relationships, for example. It used to be I could count on one hand the number of failed marriages among my friends. Now I’ve lost track. Had each couple planned, as they stood before the altar, their future division? I doubt it. Rather, each vowed their life-long commitment, full of promises and romance. But then pressures of work, raising a family and who knows what else began taking their toll. Somehow, romance and promises wound up collecting dust between the covers of photo albums in a passionless house. Without realizing what was happening, they tossed their relationships aside like so much valueless clutter.

And how many moms and dads have lost touch with the value of their children? In earlier years, they played ball together, went for picnics, had tea parties. Now there’s precious little time to do much as a family. Weeks roll into years, and memories collect dust and cobwebs.

The saddest of all examples of outgrown relationships is the way many “outgrow” their relationship with God. Where church attendance had once been an important part of childhood, and stories of Jesus had been as familiar as bedtime stories, now fishing trips or shopping at the mall take precedence on Sundays. Obviously, the value of a once vibrant relationship with the God of the universe has lost personal meaning for a large number of people.

So, what to do? How does one recover baseball cards after they are gone? Sometimes it can’t be done. Sometimes relationships with others also cannot be recovered. For other relationships, it is not too late, and recovery can be really rather simple. Rediscover the value of your parents. Rediscover the value of your spouse. Rediscover the value of your children. Rediscover the value of your relationship with God.

Prayer is a good place to start rediscovering the God who loves us. Reading the Bible is another. So is attending church or talking to a Christian minister.

Relationships can so easily become strained or torn apart. But the choice is ours. We can toss our treasures to the ground or safely protect them. One way or the other, each of us will learn in time that relationships are of much more worth than things like baseball cards.