What Makes You a Winner?
Friday night football in small towns is a great event. I remember spending lots of Friday nights watching the Dexter (MO) Bearcats play and enjoying the pre-game and half-time shows by the band.
A couple of weeks ago in southeast Missouri, the Jackson Indians played the Cape Central Tigers on Jackson’s home field. The game was really hard on Cape Central and the final score proved it. The final score was 35 – 0.
Games like that are hard to take. You practice (in a lot of heat, I might add) and you travel to the town of the opposing team. Your hopes are high. The stands are full of fans. The cheerleaders are leading cheers on your behalf. You take the field and try your hardest to score touchdowns or field goals – but you come up empty. On the visitors’ side of the scoreboard is a big fat 0.
I wasn’t at that game, and probably would not even have known about it if I hadn’t seen a post on Facebook the next day about what happened after the game. The picture that went along with the post was not of the winning team or the winning quarterback. It wasn’t a picture of the fans cheering for the Jackson Indians after defeating a long-standing school rival.
The picture was of the Cape Central fans cleaning up the stands where they had been sitting. They had brought plastic bags and were busy picking up all of the trash from their evening of enjoying some popcorn, soft drinks, and candy while watching their team lose the game. They lost the game, but they certainly won the behavior contest.
This made me begin to think about how we as Christians should act when things don’t go our way. Bad things happen to us sometimes on a daily basis – the car breaks down, a co-worker is rude to us, we fail an exam in school, the boss seems displeased with our work, a clerk at a business ignores us while we wait for service, a waiter/waitress fails to remember something for which we’ve asked – and this list could go on and on.
When these things happen to us, our reactions speak volumes about the Spirit within us. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians says a great deal about how we should handle hard situations:
- “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” (Eph. 4:26-27)
- “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (Eph. 4:29)
- “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Eph. 4:31-32)
The Cape Central Tigers lost the ball game, but they won, by their actions and example, something far more important.
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AUTHOR: Donna Faughn
