By Tim Bryant, Board Chair
The Royal Calcutta Golf Club in Kolkata, India, was established in 1828. It was the first golf club outside Great Britain and is the oldest club in India today. Built during a time when the British were colonizing the world, it was an attempt to bring a bit of normalcy to life in a distant foreign land. The golf course was a green oasis in Kolkata, and home to snakes, mongoose, birds of all kinds and … thousands of monkeys.
The builders of the course had hoped to enjoy a little piece of home as they finally played their beloved game again, but golf in India would pose a unique and frustrating challenge to the Englishmen in Kolkata. When they addressed the ball and hit their shot, a monkey would drop out of the trees, grab the ball and toss it elsewhere. Sometimes in the rough, sometimes on the green, but always somewhere else than where the ball landed. As you can imagine, this was infuriating to the Brits!
They tried everything. At first, they had the monkeys removed and released elsewhere. This, however, proved to be no solution at all since there were thousands of monkeys in India. Next, they built a tall fence around the course, but monkeys love to climb, and the fence was no obstacle for them. After a lengthy deliberation, the British did something quite unlike them: they changed the rules of golf for the Royal Calcutta Golf Club. The new rule simply stated, “You must play the ball where the monkey drops it.”
In retelling this story in his book, Play the Ball Where the Monkey Drops It, Gregory Knox Jones, writing on the subject of why we must suffer, stated it this way: “If a monkey snatched a ball right out of the fairway, and put it in the rough or under a tree, you had to play the ball where the monkey dropped it. [And] if the monkey grabbed a ball that had landed in a sand trap and put it on the fairway, or better yet, on the green, you played the ball where the monkey dropped it.”
When Life Doesn’t Go as Planned
When I came across this story a few years ago, I found it fascinating. It’s a perfect snapshot of life itself. We don’t know what’s coming or what’s next. We can barely see to the next corner and certainly not around it. Life is full of ups and downs and things we can’t control. Many times we are sitting where we never expected to be, facing something we never expected to experience. From car wrecks to cancer. From the loss of a job, a child or a friend. From financial blessings to financial ruin—we must face and walk out the good and the bad.
In fact, in situations like this, the only thing we can control is our response.
Jesus put it this way when he said in John 16:33 (NIV), “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” His brother James brings this perspective in James 1:2-4 (NLT): “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.”
Life can be unfair and sometimes cruel, but when these things happen (not if, but when), the only thing we can control is how we respond. We can throw our hands in the air and give up, or we can address the ball and take the next swing!
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