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The Revelation of Jesus Christ
Weekly Devotional for 2007

           I didn’t show much interest in golf until I turned forty. I was speaking at a conference when two pastors invited me to join them for a round at a course nearby. I borrowed a set of clubs and joined them on a blisteringly hot summer day. It wasn’t long before I learned about a special rule that most pastors seem to have if and when they golf. One of them, Ben, was on the tee of a narrow hole that had thick forest on both sides of the fairway. He shanked the ball off the heel of his club and it bounced harmlessly into the woods less than fifty yards away. With a look of disgust on his face he said, “I think I’ll take a mulligan.”
            My puzzlement over this term did not last long. He reached into his pocket, pulled out another ball, and set up to drive all over again, as if the first shot had never happened. I found out that mulligans are something like a second chance, an opportunity to do things over, get them right. Somewhat to my amusement, as the game went on Ben’s performance got worse and worse. Instead of an occasional mulligan he began to take one after another. On one shot he even did a mulligan, a “secondary” mulligan and a “tertiary” mulligan (I made the adjectives up on the spot) before he was satisfied with his shot.
            While the golf purist will be horrified with me, I find it a relief to be able to play golf without my life hanging on every shot. The chance to start over now and then takes the pressure off and makes the whole game more enjoyable. Computers have a similar feature, the “undo” key. Whenever your finger slips and hits a key that totally skews everything, and you have no clue what went wrong or how to fix it, you just hit the undo key and everything is restored the way it was before your mistake.
            The analogies are not perfect, of course. But something like a mulligan happens in your life when you give yourself to Jesus. There’s a chance to start over, to undo the guilt and burden of the past. The blood of Jesus frees us from sin, that means that His death makes it possible for us to break the chains of the past, to have a fresh start, to be forgiven. The blood of Jesus frees us not only from sin, but from fear, the fear that something we do will make us unacceptable to Him. The fear that our best will never be good enough. I don’t know about you, but I could use a mulligan now and then.

Lord, thank you that I am no longer a prisoner of the past, that my sins can be forgiven, that I can start over again today. Help me to bring all my sins and shortcomings to the blood of Jesus. Give me the sense of freedom that comes from being right with God.