In the 1956 World Series, Don Larsen laid an egg. His Yankees were leading the Brooklyn Dodgers by a score of 6-0 when he was called in to close out the game. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. But he lasted only two innings, walked four batters, and allowed four runs. Not exactly Hall of Fame stuff and the Yankees lost the game 13-8.

When Don Larsen arrived for Game Five, manager Casey Stengel gave him the ball as starting pitcher. You can imagine that Larsen was as surprised as the rest of the baseball world. And if it weren’t for Casey Stengel’s courage to offer Don Larson a chance at redemption, we would still have no post-season perfect games. But on October 8th, 1956, Don Larson faced 27 batters and kept every last one of them off of first base. His perfect game remains one of only 20 perfect games in baseball history and the only one in post-season.

And that’s one more reason to call October, “National Redemption Month.”

If the sport of baseball has reinforced any transcendent truth, it’s this: failure is not the final word.

We are surrounded by people who imagine the world is a place in which failure is the last word. They have grown so accustomed to failure that they expect it, even anticipate it. They wake up each morning hoping to avoid failure, but nagged by a heavy sense of dread. Failure takes many forms. Relationships fail. Businesses fail. We fail tests and quizzes. We fail to fight temptation. Failure. Failure. Failure.

But this is not the language of grace and this outlook is unfaithful to the redemptive work of Christ.

Ephesians 2:1-9 serves as a proof text: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy…made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved…For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

We fail.
But God!

And those two words serve as a motto of grace: “But God!”

Our lives would certainly be richer if we imagined our lives the way God does, as stories in which failure is not the final word. God is in the business of redeeming “the years the locusts have eaten” (Joel 2:25). He is redeeming every corner of life and so his mercies are new every morning. And that’s just another way of saying, “Yesterday’s failures are not the end of the story.”

In many respects, my life story is a test case for this motto of grace. God has faithfully followed each of my failures, small or massive, with redemptive moments. It takes a small but important imaginative shift to recognize this fact of our existence: “Failure is not the final word.”

Remember Don Larsen. And never forget Casey Stengel, the manager who remembered that failure is not the final word and who made a perfect game possible.

Our failures are myriad. Our perfect games are rare. Praise God for second chances and God bless those who gave us those chances.

benpalpant.com – life re-imagined