lesson from a golf ball

I have no idea why I was thinking about this last night as I lie awake, my mind refusing to surrender itself to sleep. My daughter is on the golf team at her high school and so I am having to learn this and that about the game. I found out that there are approximately 336 dimples (those little indentions on the golf ball covering) on each ball. The reason for this is "Dimples on a golf ball reduce drag by creating turbulence as the ball flies through the air." Source: DunhamSports.com.

Okay, stay with me.

My mind was thinking in the middle of the night how each of these little "dimples" represented a hurt, disappointment, failure, rejection, set back in the golf ball we call our life. (No, I'm not smoking anything). And each of these, by the definition above "create turbulence" in our lives. Now turbulence isn't fun by most accounts, but what you learn and how you react determines alot. It is the dimples in our golf ball life that increase our faith and reliance on God and, as the definition above states, "reduce drag" in our life so we can move on to be better people. When we are hit with a 5 iron or just putted about on the green of life for someone elses amusement, this shapes and molds us and at times determines the direction our lives take. As I once read somewhere, golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle... how true of life.

Just like the dimples on the golf ball causes it to perform better, so we too are launched down the fairway of life, meeting resistance and creating turbulance, finding ourselves in the rough or a sand trap, all the while swinging away - dimples and all.