On spring break between quarters at New Saint Andrews, Sharon and I flew to Phoenix to link up with our eldest son and his family. They were showing the kids the Grand Canyon before heading back to Southeast Asia. The morning before we met up with them in Flagstaff, we took the opportunity to visit one of my former SBTS students, Kyle Swanson, who's on the pastoral staff at Redeemer Bible Church in Gilbert, a congregation led by the estimable Jon Benzinger. And while in the Phoenix area, we also took in an MLB spring training game in Mesa. (Fifteen teams gather out there in the Cactus League, playing in Mesa, Scottsdale, Tempe, etc. The rest meet each other Florida’s Grapefruit League.)

This day, they were playing the Milwaukee Brewers, old rivals from the Midwest. We’d seen them play each other in Milwaukee, just up the road from our former home in Evanston. (And it turns out that one of the photos on this site shows us with the same son and his family in Miller Park. I was wearing a vintage Cubs jersey I bought from a thrift shop in Chicagoland, and I’m holding their only child at the time. She’s now a freshman at Auburn.) We’d been warned that a big snowstorm was headed for the Canyon area, but the Mesa game was played in the 70s. A beautiful day.

Through the years, I’ve come to enjoy multi-tasking at baseball games. I’ve found I can catch up on magazine reading and even grading, as I’m doing here. Though they’ve speeded up the game with the pitch clock, limits on pickoff attempts, etc., it’s still a wonderfully leisurely game. The contest is the thing, but there’s a lot to be said for just hanging out at the ballpark on a sunny afternoon.

On this day, I was still grading papers from my winter-quarter, Problem of Evil class, the one that deals with the question of how our perfectly wonderful and powerful God can allow so many folks to suffer, and often so terribly. Some of the answers focus on man’s often wicked exercise of free will. Others point to the way that God uses trials to shape us into something better. Some writers offer defenses as possibilities, conceivable ways to go at a solution. Others are bolder, presenting what they take to be plausibilities—“theodicies” (from the Greek for demonstrating the justice/righteousness of God).

Sharon took this shot of the old prof at work while watching a game that featured Dansby Swanson at shortstop for the Cubs, he named Most Outstanding Player in the 2014 College World Series, which Vanderbilt won. Harmonic convergence of some favorites: Cubs, VU, and Brewers. And yes, I bought a Cubs spring training cap.

BTW, the Brewers won, but I won’t call that evil. Maybe a little disappointing, but a Cubs loss may just be part of the Creation Order. Yes, they finally won a third World Series in 2016, this one coming after a 108-year drought. But they’re off to a bad start this year, having lost two to the Dodgers to open the season in Japan. Well, wait till next year.