TAKE ME OUT
TO THE BALL GAME
I recently went to my first Blue Jays game. What an experience! It's great to watch a live game among forty thousand fellow fans. To add to the excitement, this was the Jays' season opener! Everyone was in high spirits. The Jay's even did me the favour of wining handily against the Minnesota Twins.
The SkyDome, where the Jays play, is located in downtown Toronto, very close to Lake Ontario. Like most cities, going downtown is best achieved by using the public transit, so I went on the Subway and got off at Union Station. Union Station is a stately old building that serves to connect the Subway with the Go Train and Via Rail. From Union Station you can take the Skyway to get to the SkyDome. The Skyway is an above ground system of walkways that takes you all the way from Union Station, over the railway lands, and then exits at the foot of the CN Tower and the SkyDome. Having never used the Skyway before, I was totally impressed. The amount of money, construction and engineering that went into it is incredible.
After leaving the Skyway, I walked past the CN Tower toward the SkyDome. This was the first time that I have been at the base of the CN Tower. This structure which dominates the Toronto Skyline is impressive wherever you might spy it, but to stand at its base and then look up to its top is really an eye opener. What a massive structure!
Just after I walked past the CN Tower, I entered into the megacrowds that surrounded the SkyDome and my heart skipped a beat when I realized that I was going to have to find my friend, Brent, in the crowd because he had my ticket. Everywhere I walked, I felt like a salmon on the last leg of its journey swimming upstream. I've never seen so many people squishing, squeezing, weaving and wheezing in my life.
To make matters worse, I don't do crowds very well. I have to really work at not panicking when I am trapped in a mass of people. Such surroundings send me into major confusion. Meanwhile, the variety of vendors trying to sell their wares and, of course, the pile of scalpers trying to unload their tickets and make a profit only added to my carnival of confusion.
Shortly after I started to look for my friend with earnest (no, he wasn't with Earnest, and neither was I!), I realized that there is another law at work in the universe very much akin to the law of Mr. Murphy. Since I've discovered this law, I am calling it the Grant's Law of the Crowd. Grant's Law states: "the percentage of people with similar physical characteristics to the one you are searching for is directly proportional to the size of the crowd, and your need to find that person." I couldn't believe how many people looked like Brent.
Eventually we found one another, got inside the Dome and, after getting lost on our way to our seats, we finally sat down and watched the game. It was fun to watch the kids with their parents and grandparents. It was wonderful to hear the catcalls to the outfield while the Jays were at bat. The whole experience was really something. I'll certainly be back sometime with my family.
OK, so what "spiritual hot dogs" can I throw your way about my experience at the old ball game?
Well, the first thing I considered was the great expense that went into making the Skyway. The Dome's expense is mind boggling enough, but I can't imagine the millions that went into just planning the way to get people to the Dome. This made me think of Jesus as our own personal Skyway. Think of the expense that God went through just to give people a way of reaching Him. "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son." Jesus is the bridge, the way, the entrance into a relationship with the Father.
The second thought that came to mind concerns my friend. I had to find Brent because he had my ticket. No one else would do. No one else could help. Unfortunately, my friend didn't exactly stand out from the crowd. Jesus also had my ticket, but, thankfully, Jesus certainly does stand out from the crowd. No one acted, spoke, promised, or made claims the way Jesus did. No other holy man, no other philosopher, looks like Him. No one else can help me out of my problem with sin. There may be a crowd of people trying to get to where I am going, and there may be a pile of scalpers trying to profit from my desire to get there, but only Jesus has the ticket, because only Jesus paid the way.
If you have any thoughts or comments, just click on my name at the bottom of this page and I promise to write back.
