Once again, the Houston Astros suffered a season that tries the patience of even the staunchest baseball enthusiast. With the exception of Jose Altuve, the bats went to sleep for the first half of the season. They seemed so poor that they must even have struggled at batting practice. You could see, though, that there was no lack of trying on the part of the team when they stood in the batter's box. But the harder they tried the less success they seemed to have. The more they tried to hit the ball, the fewer were actually put into play. In mid-June the dam broke and the team began hitting like a World Series wannabe, tantalizing famously optimistic baseball fans (think: Cubs) with visions of next year's team. It seemed that they were having more fun at the plate, loosened up, and stopped trying so hard. The less they tried, the more they hit.

Life under the cross of Christ is certainly much like this. The harder people try to accomplish good works, the less likely it is that they actually do anything meritorious in the sight of God. The more they do the less they accomplish. Christianity is more about letting be, than doing. It is about letting God be God in Christ, who is the one who accomplishes salvation for the world in His suffering and death. Indeed the effort to accomplish may well lead us away from Christ. The minute we begin to trust our own works and efforts to put us in God's good graces, we have fallen from the grace of God. We are trying too hard to get what is already given to us as a gift.