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“O Lord, who may abide in thy tent? Who may dwell on Thy holy hill? He who walks with integrity and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart.” (Psalm 15:1b-2)

In A Father for All Seasons, Bob Welch writes:

    Last summer, my son Jason was a seventh-grader playing in a seventh/eighth-grade league. A fire-armed pitcher — more than a foot taller than my 4-foot-9 son — blazed a fastball right down the pike. Strike one. The second pitch scorched across the plate for a called strike two. The third pitch, unintentionally I’m sure, came right at Jason. He turned to avoid being hit and fell to the ground. His bat went flying. His helmet bounced off. The ball seemed to have skimmed his shoulder.

    “Take your base,” said the umpire.

    Standing in the third-base coach’s box, I was happy just seeing Jason alive, much less getting a free base.

“It didn’t hit me.”

    Our fans were most likely thinking the same thing I was thinking: Take your base, son. You’ve been wounded, soldier; your war’s over. You’re going home...

    “But honest, it didn’t hit me,” Jason pleaded.

    The umpire looked at Jason and out to the infield ump, who just shrugged. “Okay,” said the ump, “the count is one-and-two.”

    Should I intervene? Make him take his base? Jason was already digging in his cleats in the batter’s box. I mentally shrugged and headed back to the coach’s box.

    The towering pitcher rocked and fired. A bullet right down the middle — the kind of pitch that would send the kid to the dugout. Instead, Jason ripped the ball into left-center for a stand-up double. Our crowd roared. The manager of the team in the field was standing a few feet behind me. He had no idea that the kid on second base was my son. He spit out his sunflower seeds and slowly shook his head.

    “Man,” he said, “you gotta love that.”

    For the Christian, integrity is something to be cherished and displayed on an everyday basis, whether it works out in the short run or not.