The Used Golf Ball King

In the early 1970s, a man named Jim Reid moved to Florida to work as a surveyor for Disney World. In his spare time he took up scuba diving, searching for treasure in old shipwrecks. One day, on a whim, he dove into a water hazard at a local golf course.

He found thousands of golf balls.

The local pro offered him ten cents a ball for everything he could retrieve. Reid discovered he could make in one day what he earned in a week as a surveyor. So he quit his job, started a business, and called it Second Chance. By 1994 he sold it for five million dollars.

The pastor and writer King Duncan picked up on that story and said: "Jim Reid is not the only one who specializes in finding that which is lost. God is the ultimate finder of that which others have marked off as irretrievable. What God finds is not lost golf balls — but lost people."

That line has stayed with me. Because many of us, if we are honest, at some point in our lives, have felt beyond redemption.

And there is something in us that almost believed it. That agreed with the verdict. That wondered whether the damage was too deep or the distance too great for any of it to be retrieved.

But the gospel keeps insisting otherwise. It keeps telling the story of the one who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one. The father who sees his son while he is still a long way off and runs to meet him. The God who finds Saul on the road to Damascus — of all people — and says, you are my chosen instrument.

And — here we are. Found. Retrieved. Given another chance.

The gospel has always been in the second chance business. It has never run out of inventory.

Prayer: We thank you, O God, for finding us when we were lost — for retrieving what others might have left behind. You specialize in second chances. May we never take ours for granted, and may we extend that same grace to others; in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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