Winning (now) is not Everything

Winning (now) is not Everything 

We have heard the “winning is everything.” Is it, really?

As I write, two baseball teams are left, playing for the right to be called World Series champions. They are scrapping and fighting, because winning is everything. You cannot be called “champion” unless you win the last game. But do you know what will crop up in the post-game discussion? “What about next year?” It seems that winning it all this year is not everything, since there is always another season.

Yes, there is always another season, and that changes the calculation on how we think about winning. So what if you did not win the final game? Were there accomplishments along the way that were actually more important than winning the final game? Were lives changed, or goals met, or a brotherhood formed, that will survive long after the celebration of a last game victory? Winning is not everything. What if your struggles in the present season are preparing you for what you will experience in the next season? Is that “winning”?

For Christians, the next season is not in this earthly life. Whatever accomplishment you may achieve here, it may not count for much over there. Winning now is not everything. Being the winner in the money sandbox is not real winning. Nicest house or fastest car? No. Travelling around the world. These may all be nice things, but they speak only to this-world accomplishments. They are not indicators of doing well in the next season.

There are believers who have served the Lord in difficult places who will be regarded as winners in the next season - the season that counts. There will be relatively less-gifted people who stewarded their gifts well who will be more richly rewarded than those with greater gifts, because they used well what they were given. There will be those who lived very short lives who, in those short years, accepted God’s plan for their shortened lives and served faithfully and testified clearly that living a short life in right relation to God far exceeds the value of living a long life in this world only to find that the ladder they climbed is leaning against the wrong reality.

I still think of Joseph, who married Mary, Jesus’ mother. He accepted the situation of a pregnant fiancé, though it was difficult to understand and impossible to explain. He obeyed God, at risk to his own life, let alone that of his wife and baby. He moved and started over and worked and prayed. And then he disappeared. No one would call Joseph a winner. Joseph went from marginal character to a missing person. Winning is not everything. 

And though I don’t know the whole story, I suspect in the next season, when we stand before God on the throne, Joseph and those like him may receive more honor than those who seemed to win it all in this world.