Bible Study January 17, 2025
Galatians 5:22 – 26
22 “But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control; and here there is no conflict with Jewish laws. 24 Those who belong to Christ have nailed their natural evil desires to his cross and crucified them there. 25 If we are living now by the Holy Spirit’s power, let us follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. 26 Then we won’t need to look for honors and popularity, which lead to jealousy and hard feelings.”
Proverbs 11:3 “A good man is guided by his honesty; the evil man is destroyed by his dishonesty.”
I’m old enough to have watched Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial both play major league baseball. Both were extremely talented. Yet both took a different path to living their lives.
I watched an interview by Bob Costas about Mickey Mantle. Mantle was invited to St. Louis by Costas for a charity event and stayed with the Costas family. Costas related that Mantle was a great baseball player but had regrets and demons. They were having dinner at Costas’ home when he invited Stan Musial and his wife over.
After dinner and everyone was gone or in bed Costas related he and Mantle were having a late night talk. Mantle said to him “You know I should have been as good a player as Stan I had more power and no one could run faster than me but Stan was a better player than me because he was a better man than me. He got everything out of what God had given him.
Mantle died at sixty-three while Musial lived into his early nineties. Costas relates that Musial got on a plane and unannounced went to the funeral of Mantle. Costas, who was doing the eulogy, looks out and sees Musial in the audience sitting alone.
He tells the story of an Allstar game in the fifties when the black baseball greats like Mays, Aaron, Banks and others were gathered in the corner of the clubhouse playing cards no white players were there. Musial walks over to the group and simply says “deal me in.” That was his way of letting those players know they were welcome. That was who Musial was a man of integrity.
In 1994, a year before his death from alcohol-induced cirrhosis, hepatitis C and inoperable liver cancer, Mickey Mantle gave a remorseful interview to Sports Illustrated. The New York Yankees superstar center fielder and first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee recounted his life as an alcoholic with brutal candor.
He goes on to say that the death of Musial was not a tragedy as the death of Mantle was.
His whole point in the interview concerning these events was decency. What is a decent man? Paul tells us in Galatians five.
Have a blessed day.
Asbury Chapel 