I should not fail to mention one of the biggest sports stories going around right now. No, not University of Oklahoma’s winning its fourth-in-a-row national championship in Women’s Softball, as monumental as that is. I’m talking about the US defeating Pakistan in…wait for it…cricket.

Cricket?! I didn’t even know the US had a cricket team. Someone asked for an analogy for the importance of the US defeating Pakistan. Answer: Pakistan defeating the US in basketball. You can read all about the match in the ESPN article: USA outclass sloppy Pakistan in thrilling Super Over finish. You can read it, but if you’re like me, you won’t understand much of it. I don’t even understand the headline. Here are a couple of sample paragraphs:

Thanks to the extras and other acts of fielding indiscipline from Pakistan, USA made 18 off their Super Over

If this already seemed a tough ask for Pakistan to better, Saurabh Netravalkar made their job even more difficult. He had been outstanding for USA in regular play, taking 2 for 18 from his four overs. His Super Over was outstanding too, as he conceded just one boundary.

Thanks to four leg byes off the penultimate delivery, Shadab Khan had the opportunity to send the match into a second super over if he clobbered a six off the last ball. He could only hit it to deep point, all along the ground.

Huh? How can something written in plain English be that unintelligible?

Answer: I don’t know anything about cricket.

Do some of our presentations of the gospel sound like that to an unbeliever who’s never given God much of a thought? Randy Newman, writing in Questioning Evangelism, opens with a story of his attempting to share the gospel using the well-known Four Spiritual Laws with a Ukrainian student.

I read the first point: “God loves you and created you to know Him personally.” I don’t remember pausing at that point. I don’t think I even breathed. But somehow Artyum interrupted. “What do you mean when you say the word God?” he wondered aloud. “And what do you mean when you say the word love? And, most importantly, how do you know all this is true?” – Questioning Evangelism, Randy Newman, page 23.

The Apostle Paul knew that effective communication is non-trivial, requiring careful thought and much prayer:

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. (Colossians 4.2 – 4, ESV)