Butterfingers

I don't really know a whole lot about sports.
One thing I do remember comes from playing cricket in primary school. More specifically playing Hit and Giggle. Not knowing very much about the rules of cricket I can't really tell you how these games are different except that I have an inkling H&G is a good deal more interesting.
We'd scatter around the oval under the hot Australian sun.
Broad rimmed school hats atop our heads. Someone who actually played cricket (usually a boy) would show us all his mad bowling skilz under arming or using some whip your arm around manoeuvre with his favourite tennis ball.
One of my yellow and blue clad classmates would hit the tennis ball right up into the air. We'd run about like ants in the rain until the ball would come hurtling back down to the ground.
I might have been hopeless at sports but it wasn't until high school that I became too cool for them so if the ball came hurtling in my direction I would put my arms out in front of my face trying desperately to catch it. More often than not it would bounce out of my hands and onto the dusty crunchy grass.

"Butterfingers!" The boys who played cricket on the weekend would call.
It was, as I would come to understand, their highly sophisticated term for someone who dropped the ball. The ball would be tossed back to the kid with the mad skillz and play would resume.

Butterfingers.

These last couple of weeks in the lead up to Easter have made me think back to that little uncoordinated kid in primary school.
All the tennis balls flying up in the sky and me with my hands outstretched trying to catch them. Not wanting to be the one to drop them.

I think of the lists I've made, the hours spent thinking of all the things to do, the run sheets, the alarms set on my phone to remind me to do this and that. I think of myself as an efficiency machine, super mum, super lady. Getting stuff done!

Then I think of the things I've missed out. The conversation I didn't make time for, the badly organised meeting, the excess chocolate consumption and lack of exercise follow up. The butterfingers causing things to slip.

And then, as is prudent at Easter time, I think of Jesus.
Hanging there on that cross.
He is no Butterfingers.

When Jesus went to die he left no job undone.
He didn't drop the ball.
The time was made.
The love poured out.
His work finished.
It. Is. Done.

And Jesus, he's not just the role model ball catcher.
He's not the one who we've got to be like or suffer the consequences.

He didn't drop the ball, because we could never keep hold of it.
He held on tight because we never would do so.
He put himself upon the cross so that we might never go there ourselves.

And there is joy and peace and hope in this news.
My purpose lies not in my ability to juggle or hold or catch but to trust in the one who can.

I'm a butterfingers.
My hands will slip and fumble
but God's strength will never end.