What Does Practice Make?

Here we go! My horseshoes pitching season begins tonight. I think I'm ready.

Many of my horseshoes buddies have taken a break since October, but I've continued to practice.

We'll see if it makes a difference. I was really not satisfied with my pitching last year. On my good days, I was pretty good, but even on those days I'd have bad patches. I think I've worked out the problems. At least I'll know now what to adjust.

The old saying is that "practice makes perfect." That's not true, unless it's a lot more practice than I can comprehend. Perfection is hard to come by. We cannot control everything that happens around us.

Excelling at horseshoes is fairly simple. Each pitcher has to develop a throw that can be (with practice) repeated over and over. The delivery requires an intense concentration on the stake at the other end of the court. Perfection ought to be possible, but it just doesn't happen. We're human. We get distracted, our muscles get sore or maybe weakened after a hundred pitches. Goodness, at times my horseshoe bounces off somebody else's.

When you read through your Bible, you'll see that we've tried over and over to live perfectly by God's guidelines. That precious book records our victories and failures and good intentions. Our only hope of an eternal relationship with God is grace, God's love for us that we don't deserve.

Because practice doesn't make perfect.

"For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: It is the gift of God." Ephesians 2:8