An unseen umpire whose judgment is firm, fair and final

"May the Lord be our judge and decide between us. May he consider my cause and uphold it." (I Samuel 24:15)

These old words, written as a plea concerning events that transpired more than 3,000 years ago in ancient Israel, got me thinking about how all of us -- in certain times and places -- want a decisive arbiter, someone to make firm, final decisions. In the home in which I was raised, my parents filled that role. In my classroom at Southeast Missouri State University, I hold that exalted position with my students -- at least for the semester and in one three-hour course. There is no appeal unless I've been demonstrably abusive, a condition that is well-nigh impossible to prove.

Baseball has had arbiters since the inception of the game. We call them umpires. But umpires no longer have final authority.

In the interest of full transparency, I don't watch a lot of baseball. My routine the last few years is to get to one game a year at Busch, usually when the Cardinals play the team I grew up with, the Pittsburgh Pirates.

On May 1, it was interesting to watch baseball's instant replay system at work. In the past, if a manager challenged an umpire's call, he normally entered the field of play, expressed his displeasure and occasionally was thrown out of the game for his trouble. The fracas between umpire and manager is sometimes entertaining, as a team skipper gets right into the face of an umpire, voicing unhappiness at a decibel level loud enough to be heard by some fans.

A replay proponent will argue these on-field arguments were moot, as the umpire rarely reversed a call. Plus these fruitless tete-a-tetes served to slow down an already leisurely game. Lament the loss or not, a fan lost something with the advent of replay.

An articulate gentleman at Chateau Girardeau opined baseball's next innovation will be to have a computer call balls and strikes -- and take a human referee out of the equation entirely. A computer, it is reasoned, will never be wrong. Flesh-and-blood humans too often err.

For the moment, only so-called "game-changing" plays can be reviewed. A manager can call for a replay once a game until the seventh inning. If he's proven right when the replay is judged, he can ask for another later -- again, before the seventh. If his first challenge is deemed wrong, the manager is denied another opportunity to appeal.

If, say, manager Mike Matheny challenges an ump's call, a phone attached to a long black cord is brought into the field of play so the umpiring crew can call the replay office in New York. (In this day and age, they can't use a cellphone for this?) A big-league ump, sitting in an office hundreds of miles away, looks at the play in question from a variety of video angles and makes a decision. It is final. There is no appeal.

A colleague of mine in ministry suggested recently to his parishioners baseball is a good metaphor for life. Major League Baseball now has an umpire, far from the action, invisible to the fans, who has unimpeachable authority. A person of faith also has an unseen life umpire, to whom all actions are ultimately reviewable, and whose judgment is firm, fair and final. Moreover, this umpire's decisions are deemed trustworthy and true. You know this umpire.

"Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:9-11)

Happy Mother's Day to all.