Once there was a young Christian man who had a terrible day. Everywhere he went, and everywhere he turned, there was some temptation waiting for him there, leering. On the way out the door to school, his mother asked him three times if he wanted his gloves, and by the time he got to the car he was struggling mightily with annoyance. The fact that he had to scrape the windshield without gloves didn’t help. On the way to school he had to drive by a billboard with a model on it who was almost wearing some clothes, and that tugged at him, and as a result irritated him. When he got to school he discovered that the assignment he thought was due on Friday was actually due on Thursday, and because today was Wednesday, there went his evening with the guys. The whole day went like that.
That evening, disgusted, he was talking with his father about it. “I think it was my worst day ever,” he said in a funk.
“Well, that may be,” his dad said. “But it sounds to me like it might have been your best day ever.”
The son’s eyebrows went up. His dad was always saying strange things like this. “Okay, what?” he said, after a moment.
“Dealing with temptation,” his father said, “is like playing tennis with the devil. You don’t lose any points just because the ball comes on your side of the net. The problems start when you hit it back over the fence, into the net, or catch it and put it in your pocket.”
“What do you mean?”
“All these troubles, these suggestions, these temptations. Did you hit them back?”
“Well, yeah. It wasn’t pretty, but I hit them all back.”
“And you are discouraged now because the devil kept it up too? You hit it back, and then, right away, there another temptation was, back on your side of the court? You volleyed all day?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Well, you’re not defeated . . . just tired. This doesn’t sound to me like one of the worst days ever. It sounds like one of the best days ever. Hence my comment.”
“Best is wanting to sin every ten minutes?”
His dad laughed. “That’s not bad Christianity. That’s good tennis.”