What Baseball Teaches Us About Heaven
By Movieguide® Contributor
Can baseball teach us about heaven? One fan thinks so.
Josh Noem collects images of walk-off home runs because they remind him of “how he views us entering heaven.”
“I recently read about a man who collects pictures of hitters who had hit walk-off home runs. He said that the reason he did this is because this is how he views us entering heaven,” Greg Payne, a podcaster, said of Noem on social media.
The post included a photo of a baseball player running home into the open arms of his teammates.
“Look at the faces of his teammates waiting to welcome him home. Look at their excitement,” he continued. “They can’t wait to celebrate with him. Look at the fans. Arms raised, big smiles, maybe even hugs for a perfect stranger.”
For those dealing with grief this holiday season, the photo might offer some encouragement.
“Perhaps this is your first holiday season without someone important who is now waiting for you in heaven. Maybe it’s just another one with that big hole in your heart and an empty seat at the table. Either way, I hope you can find encouragement in this picture, what it represented to the man who collected it, and find joy this year,” Payne added.
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“Thank you I needed this. First holiday season without my baby brother, this is comforting,” one user wrote.
Another wrote, “I lost both of my parents last year. Dad was a Yankees fan (we forgave him) but Mom was a Cubs fan and raised me the same. If heaven can look anything like a place on earth, for me and her it would look and feel like Wrigley Field. I like to think that her loved ones greeted her with open arms as she ran for home and that someday I will be welcomed the same way. Until then I have a love here on earth that unites us.”
Noem isn’t the first to make comparisons between baseball and faith.
“The similarities between baseball and religion abound,” said Former New York University President John Sexton in his book “Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game.” “The ballpark as cathedral; saints and sinners; the curses and blessings. But then what I’m arguing is beyond that surface level, there’s a fundamental similarity between baseball and religion which goes to the capacity of baseball to cause human beings, in a context they don’t think of as religious, to break the plane of ordinary existence into the plane of extraordinary existence.”
If you’re looking for hope or encouragement this holiday season, maybe turning on your favorite sport will remind you of the hope we have in heaven.
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