My Relationship With Patrick Roy, Mike Slaughter's Relationship With Pete Rose, And Our Relationship With God

That's the longest blog post title ever. Sweet.

Mike Slaughter, in his great book Unlearning Church, writes this:

I have an autographed baseball that reads, "To Mike, Pete Rose." I have one of Pete Rose's baseball bats that he used during the 1970's. I can tell you Pete Rose's batting averages and his all-time hit total. My family was in the stadium the night he made his most famous hit. I know all about Pete Rose, but I have never met him.


Which made me think of this:

The Colorado Avalanche are my favorite team - hockey and all sports. The year they moved to Colorado from Quebec was the year that Patrick Roy was traded to the Avs. I was a fan of Roy even before the Avalanche, when he played for Montreal. I have an autographed Patrick Roy card. I have an autographed Patrick Roy puck. One of the secretaries I worked with in Colorado and her husband were very good friends with Patrick Roy and his wife. I even have a piece of carpet from Patrick Roy's house that my secretary gave me (Don't ask why I asked for a piece of carpet, they were moving to another community and that was the only thing I could think of). When I lived in Dallas, I had the opportunity to go and see Patrick Roy win his 500th career game, against the Dallas Stars. I have even met one of Patrick Roy's kids.

True story: I was getting ready for a broomball event in Colorado, when a girl approached me and asked me if I played for the Colorado Avalanche. I was feeling pretty good about myself, until I realized I had my Avs jersey on (I thought I might have looked big enough to be a hockey player, ha ha). I told her no, and then she said, "My dad plays for the Avalanche." I'm thinking in my head, "Yeah, right." I asked her what her name was. She said, "Jenna Roy." My mouth dropped open. I have also met Patrick Roy's wife, because she came to my home church's Easter service one year. I know all about Patrick Roy, I've even met family members, but I've never met him. I have no relationship with Roy.


Which made me think of this:

Why am I so smug sometimes when it comes to my relationship with God? I know a lot about Him; I studied Him in college. Before that, I memorized books of the Bible in junior high and high school. But as Mike Slaughter says, "A relationship is an interchange of love and thought. More than knowledge alone, it involves intimacy." Why is it that sometimes, I fall back on my knowledge of God, and fail to realize my need to deepen my love and affection for Him every day, every hour, every minute, every second?


And then this came in my head:

This isn't new stuff. Yet why is the old stuff so hard to get through my thick skull sometimes?

"Just as knowing about Pete Rose doesn't mean I have a relationship with him, for many Christian leaders, knowledge about God doesn't mean they know God. In fact, sometimes our knowledge of God gets in the way of knowing God."

Amen, Mike.