Keep Your Eye on the Ball!

My baseball coach stressed the importance of focusing on the ball—and it’s a lesson that I’ve found can help in every aspect of life.

“Keep your eye on the ball.” It’s a phrase that I picked up from my baseball coach. It encourages you to force the noise of the crowd out and to focus on the ball you want to hit. If you keep your eye on the ball, your confidence will increase and the ball will seem bigger and easier to hit.

We can use the concept of keeping our eye on the ball in both our physical and spiritual lives.

Physical life

What does my baseball coach’s advice have to do with your life? It means to stay focused on a future goal and achieve it (Proverbs 4:25).

Once, when I was practicing pitching before a game, my coach pulled me aside and said the ball leaving my hand should be like a slow-motion movie all the way till it hits the bat or glove. That trick helps you focus your throw at a certain spot—like the catcher’s mitt.

Life is like a game of baseball. Focus allows you to reach and achieve your goals.

We need to focus on the road ahead. At the beginning of this year my high school principal said, “Lift your head up and hit school on a high note.” If we don’t lift our heads up, we will only see our feet and will not get anywhere in life. In life, if we focus on our feet, we might just run into a wall.

If, however, we focus on the road ahead, we’ll avoid the wall and achieve our goals. Lift your head up and hit life on a high note. Don’t hit the wall. Achieve your goals.

Spiritual life

As important as it is in our physical lives, focus is even more important in our spiritual lives. What’s the road we need to keep our eyes on spiritually? That road is God’s road (Matthew 7:13-14). If we look far enough ahead on the road we are walking, we should be able to see the Kingdom of God. We can see God’s Kingdom through meditation, prayer and Bible study.

We should all have spiritual goals, but are our goals high enough? We should all look deep inside and ask ourselves if we are doing the best we can do—or if we can do better. We should all have a fire in our belly trying to strive and gain more knowledge of God’s way. We can do that by keeping our eye on His Kingdom.

In physical life we can block out outside distractions and focus on achieving our goal. Our spiritual life should be the same. We should block out the world and Satan’s influence and push forward to the Kingdom of God.

We should not turn to the left or right but must push forward and look ahead (Isaiah 30:21). Satan will throw things at us, and we will need to push them away. We cannot be distracted by what Satan wants us to have; if he wants us to have it, it’s not good.

Just remember to keep your eyes forward and don’t lose focus on the path to God’s Kingdom.

Read more about focusing on the Kingdom in the article “Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God.”

Samuel Travers is a high school freshman who attends the Athens, Ohio, congregation of the Church of God, an International Association.