Pro golfer Ben Griffin rebounds after “creatine overdose”

The sports world is abuzz today after Scottie Scheffler won yesterday’s BMW Championship in stunning fashion, sinking an eighty-two-foot chip shot on the second-to-last hole to seal the victory. It was a shot for the ages, and when I saw it on television, I paused the set and asked my wife to come watch as I replayed it for her. Even she was impressed, and very little about golf impresses her.

The other story the commentators continued to tell had to do with Ben Griffin, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour. Shockingly, he began his final round with a triple bogey, followed by a double bogey and then a bogey. For non-golfers, that’s really bad.

However, he turned his round around with three straight birdies to close the front nine and four more birdies in the final six holes of the day. For non-golfers, that’s really good. He finished tied for twelfth along with Rory McIlroy, the number-two golfer in the world.

Now we know what caused Griffin’s horrid start: creatine. He explained:

I take creatine as a supplement and this morning I didn’t take it until I basically teed off on one. I was at the end of my batch, and I had this like, basically a snowball of creatine. So it had been in my bucket for a month, and [I] broke it up and put it in my water bottle. Whatever, I’m all good. I’ve taken it on the golf course before. It’s fine.

I started taking it after my second shot and I accidentally swallowed one of the big rocks that was in my water bottle. I’ve never overdosed on creatine before, but I think I did in the moment because I didn’t really drink any water after that. I basically just inhaled it like a snowball.

That “snowball” of creatine, he said, hit him almost immediately: “I started getting super shaky. I’ve never felt like this before, and I literally felt like I had tremors.” His caddie stepped in and forced him to chug an entire water bottle, helping him calm down. He turned around his round in remarkable fashion as a result.

My act of faith this morning

In today’s entry in Billy Graham’s daily devotional, Wisdom For Each Day, he wrote:

Have you ever stopped to think about all the things you accept by faith every day? By faith we assume the other driver will stop at his red light. By faith we assume the pharmacist filled the prescription correctly. By faith you assumed that when you put your feet on the floor this morning it wouldn’t collapse. Faith is a much greater part of life than most of us realize.

Ben Griffin is an example. He swallowed a “snowball” of creatine by faith that it would do what creatine apparently has always done in his body. His problem was not with the amount of faith but its object.

Janet and I were walking through an intersection early this morning when a pickup truck driver rushed up to his stop sign before slamming on his brakes as we passed in front of him. We had faith that he would stop in time, but if he had not, we would have had to move very quickly to get out of his way.

You and I take such steps of “faith” multiple times every day. If their object is worthy of such trust, all works out. If it is not, it does not.

My act of faith at lunch

Dr. Graham added:

A skeptic may protest that these are things we can see and touch, whereas God is not. But look at the world around you, with all of its beauty and complexity. Isn’t it more logical to believe that behind it is an all-powerful and all-wise Creator, than to think it happened by chance?

Let’s stay with that thought for a moment.

Should we trust the fallen people we can see more than the omnipotent, omnibenevolent God we cannot? Why is our ability to see the object of our trust so vital to our decision to trust it?

When I had spinal surgery a few years ago, I put my life in the hands of an anesthesiologist I could not see due to his work in anesthetizing me. When my truck needed service recently, I trusted a technician who did things I did not watch and would not have understood if I did. When I go to lunch later today, I will trust a kitchen staff I have never met to prepare our food in ways that are healthy and not deadly. Right now, I am trusting the air conditioning I do not see to cool the air and not poison it. The list goes on and on.

We all have faith in unseen people and things every day. The key is to measure the evidence and then take a step beyond it into a commitment that becomes self-validating.

To this end, the Lord promises us, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3). We must trust that this “water” is indeed from the “wells of salvation,” but when we do, we experience a joy found nowhere else. With this result: “And you will say in that day: ‘Give thanks to the Lᴏʀᴅ, and call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted’” (v. 4).

Such faith does not produce or deserve the gifts of God’s grace. But like all gifts, it is essential if we are to receive and share them.

An ex-atheist invites us to faith

Alister McGrath is a professor of science and religion at Oxford University. With earned doctorates in molecular biophysics and historical theology, he is one of the most brilliant public intellectuals of our time. His pathway from atheism to evangelical Christianity is both inspiring and encouraging.

Along that road, Dr. McGrath discovered that “faith is not something that goes against the evidence, it goes beyond it. The evidence is saying to us, ‘There is another country. There is something beyond mere reason.’” He discovered that “something” to be a Someone and has spent his life encouraging others to do the same.

According to McGrath,

We live in a world of competing narratives. In the end, we have to decide for ourselves which is right. And having made that decision, we then need to inhabit the story we trust.

Will you “inhabit the story” of Jesus today?