The Christian faith, like the long-suffering fervour of some sports followers, requires persistence. Richard Cubie draws inspiration from United States baseball team, the Boston Red Sox.
In North America, October and the legendary autumn colours in New England, always anticipate the Major League Baseball play-offs and World Series games, lending raw excitement for people taking breath before a northern winter.
In Boston, up until 2004, this time of year assumed a particular resonance as the city and its occupants braced themselves for the Curse of the Bambino, and another year of disappointment.
Why? Because the Boston Red Sox had not won the World Series since 1918.
Some fans believed the Red Sox would never win again after their management had sold the hero of those World Series wins, Babe Ruth, to bitter rivals the New York Yankees.
Hence the demonstrable evil visited upon the Red Sox through the irretrievable Curse.
Decades of failure on the part of their team was clear and compelling evidence that something dark and supernatural was at work.
We should not underestimate the impact that Major League Baseball has on North American daily life.
It is completely intertwined and integrated into the psyche of all fans.
I unashamedly claim to be one, having watched the Sox at Fenway Park many times over the past 15 years.
The total absorption with this sport is quite unlike the obsession with rugby here and the emotional surge that accompanies the periodic All Blacks internationals; baseball gets under your skin.
In another area of daily life and human obsession, many of the great world religions and particularly the Christian faith have developed in such a way that their constructs are designed to get under your skin.
To hold Christian faith implies that God becomes all-present in every aspect of a Christian's daily life and thoughts - but for a Christian the season is never-ending.
That is one of the basic premises that a Christian accepts: that through the redemption of the sins of man, bought with His life by Jesus on the cross, a Christian can look forward to eternal life.
So why do many Christians display impatience? Why do so many Christians buy in to the assumption that all world problems will be solved, and evil eradicated, within the time span of their individual lives?
A number of commentators and correspondents to this paper have raised the philosophical dilemma as to why a loving God can allow evil to exist and allow acts of offensive and obscene brutality to happen to the people whom he created and loves.
The horror of evil acts and events perpetrated by people upon people are brought to us daily in image and word, but are inexplicable and should be preventable in terms of the fundamental humanitarian message embedded in the Bible.
I would suggest the widely held beliefs that God will defeat evil and a loving God would not allow evil to occur in the first place, miss the point.
That is, that nothing necessarily happens overnight, or this year or next year, or in my lifetime or your lifetime because we want it to be so.
In a world where immediate gratification has become the expectation of most people in advanced countries, we have translated this secular imperative into our spiritual expectations.
We have done so, as Christians, without firstly consulting the Bible.
The Bible, and particularly the New Testament, does not direct us to the expectation that God will be responsible for the free acts of will of individual people.
On the contrary, the unequivocal message is that people should put aside their own desires in preference for the needs of other people, in much the way that a loving parent would for their child.
The responsibility is ours then, and change will not come about unless we change ourselves.
If we don't do anything, then nothing will happen.
For a world population of six billion to not only accept such a doctrine, but to act upon it too is not impossible, but will take time.
How long? Hundreds of years, thousands of years? Who knows, but it is still worth working towards however long it will take.
Imagine the despair of the original signatories to the League of Nations Charter in 1919, when the evil of World War 2 erupted and 62 million people lost their lives.
However, the United Nations still exists and its healing work grows in importance.
The message in the Bible is not, "I am your God and I will fix it all!", but "I am a loving God and if you listen to what I say, and act on it, here is the way in which you can defeat evil. Now, back to you."
I am content to know that goodness and love will prevail over evil, maybe not in my lifetime, but eventually, and that any small act of mine in following the Bible's message will contribute to that goal.
That is enough and all that any of us are asked to do.
In Boston, dedicated baseball fans born after 1918 lived their lives, generation after generation, in the hope that the Curse of the Babe would be exorcised.
Most of the first generation died, their dreams of a World Series ticket for Fenway Park thwarted.
This year, they've been swept aside again - by the Los Angeles Angels, no less.
But in 2004, a team of Red Sox misfits, known as the Gas Street Gang, won the World Series and then, shockingly, won again in 2007. Persistence overcame The Curse.
It always will.
Richard Cubie is an occasional contributor. He lives in Wanaka.
