Yo-Yo
September 4, 2016
By Ed Young
INTRO: You know a golf club in my hand isn't that great, but in the hands of someone like Jordan Spieth it’s a birdie waiting to happen. A baseball in my hands isn't that great but a baseball bat in the hands of Babe Ruth, wow. It’s a home run waiting to happen. A spatula in my hand is something my wife has never seen. A spatula in the hand of Rachael Ray is something to behold. You know you’re going to have a five-star meal.
What happens when we do something ordinary, yet we put that object in the hands of someone who’s a master, who’s extraordinary. That’s what I’m talking about today. How to move from being ordinary to extraordinary, because our great God has that kind of plan for your life and mine. There’s someone who is going to walk on this stage who is truly a master. In fact, if we did what he’s going to do beside him it would be OK, it would be average. This guy, I’m telling you, is on a whole ‘notha level. His name is Connor Donley. He’s six years old. He’s 42” tall. He hails from North Richland Hills, Texas. Let’s give him a warm Fellowship welcome!
[CONNOR DONLEY’S YOYO ROUTINE]
Wow! The hand-eye coordination. He’s six years old. Man, it’s worth coming to church to see that! Well, we are talking about the yo-yo today. When everyone leaves you’ll get a free yo-yo. How good is that? A free yo-yo. And who knows, maybe, just maybe one day if you practice and watch enough YouTube videos you, too, can be like Connor Donley. I do love the yo-yo.
I remember as a kid yo-yos were hot. They were cool in our elementary schools and even our junior high schools, and back in the day it was the Duncan yo-yo. I was talking to Connor about yo-yos and in fact Duncan is still large today. The yo-yo champion back then was a guy named Bunny Martin. Bunny would do all of these yo-yo tricks. I would watch advertisements on television for Duncan yo-yos. Of course YouTube wasn’t invented yet, and we would try to mimic what Bunny Martin did. There was the typical yo-yo, then there was the butterfly yo-yo that kind of looked like a butterfly like this. And my brothers and I, we would yo-yo around the house and invariably we would have strings that were all knotted up. Yo-yos would break and we hit our dog Barney, the beagle, on the head a couple of times. I think we broke a lamp or two. We really enjoyed yo-yoing. I love yo-yoing. There’s something about it. You just go up and then down, you go up and then down.
And I did try to learn some tricks. Like, can you do the sleeper? The sleeper is like a basic trick. You just let it sleep, and then you tug it and it comes back. No applause, please. I’m an amateur.
Then one of the ones I really enjoyed doing, rock the baby. Anybody can do rock the baby at one of our campuses? So you just go here, whoa. See. Wow, you can break your finger. OK, watch this. Rock the baby, if I can do it. <crying sound effect). Rock the baby, OK.
Walk the dog. I love dogs. Anyone can do walk the dog? Yeah, so you throw the yo-yo down. It spins, it has inertia, momentum, and it’s like you’re walking a dog. Walk the dog.
