Keep swinging. Keep doing your job.

"My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging."

--"Hammering" Hank Aaron

Keep swinging. Keep doing your job.

Aaron, now 85, was major league baseball's all-time home run leader for 33 years.

Barry Bonds, his accomplishments perhaps forever tainted by allegations (unproven in court) he used steroids, broke Aaron's record in 2007.

Aaron, the Alabama-born slugger for the Milwaukee (later Atlanta) Braves, is an elder statesman of the game. His views are respected. He did his job the right way.

There were times Aaron tired of the game. Tired of the pressure of having to hit round-trippers. Tired of the race prejudice faced by African-American ballplayers. Tired of the continued fan adulation as his body broke down in the 1970s.

Yet he kept doing his job.

He kept swinging.

As this story is written, most fans in these parts have entered baseball winter.

Their beloved St. Louis Cardinals fell quickly and meekly to the surprising Washington Nationals in the National League Championship Series.

I'm a committed National Leaguer so I'm pulling for the Nats in the Series.

Aaron's approach to the game and to life is mirrored in "The Cardinal Way," the philosophy espoused by the late Redbird third-base coach George Kissell.

Kissell was an unapologetic baseball lifer.

Ex-Cardinals skipper Whitey Herzog once said the following of Kissell, who spent nearly 70 years in the St. Louis organization without ever once playing in the majors:

"George is the only man I know who can talk 15 minutes (just) about a ground ball."

Kissell's notion of a "Cardinal Way" has found its way into print. Every player who signs with the St. Louis organization receives Kissell's handbook, an 86-page booklet.

The smallish tome outlines a systematic approach for how to develop players who dream of playing for the big club.

Kissell, who died in 2008, had a simple idea.

"Tell me, and I'll forget," Kissell told Sports Illustrated in 1989.

"Show me, and I'll remember. Involve me, and I'll understand."

And then do your job.

Keep swinging.

One of my treasured roles today is to teach the New Testament to students at SEMO. I suspect Kissell and the apostle Paul, had they been contemporaries, would have been kindred spirits.

St. Paul told the Gentile churches he founded to watch him and learn -- and then do likewise.

"Those things which you have ... heard and seen in me, do, and the God of peace will be with you." (Philippians 4:9)

Paul dealt with churches which collectively had begun to sit on their hands, expecting the second coming of Christ to be imminent.

The greatest evangelist of the 1st century was having none of it.

"Those who will not work shall not eat," Paul said. (2 Thessalonians 3:10)

It is the opinion of many scholars 2 Thessalonians is not an authentic letter of Paul, that it was written in his name to honor him. Perhaps.

Whoever penned those words was speaking to the unwillingness to work rather than inability.

Clearly there are those who can no longer labor.

My maternal grandmother lived long enough her eyesight failed.

If she tried to cook, she might have burned the house down because she couldn't tell if she had turned off the burners.

If she tried to make a call, with those old rotary telephones no longer in use in most homes, she couldn't see the numbers.

Playing the piano? Forget it.

Do a crossword puzzle? Are you kidding? With her macular degeneration?

Drive a car? Are you keeping up?

But Grandma could pray. And prayer keeps the Spirit circulating, just as bees that never leave the hive keep the air moving -- enabling the community to live and thrive.

But what about those with dementia who can't pray?

They have a purpose, too.

They act as receivers of the care which you and I provide -- to show the love and compassion of our loving God, who forgets not a single one of us.

Hammering Hank and George Kissell and St. Paul and, yes, my Grandma of blessed memory, all might say to you and me:

Do your job, whatever it is.

Keep swinging.