Who’s a Winner?

Yesterday in the football…

Norwich beat Millwall 3-1; Norwich were the winners. Many were bitterly disappointed when the English Lionesses lost 1-0 to Spain in the final of the World Cup; they’ve come second in a world tournament… so are they winners?

Yesterday in the world athletics championships…

Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson won the heptathlon; a great gold medalled winner. Zharnel Hughes was delighted to receive the bronze medal after a photo finish in the 100 metres; third place… was he a winner?

Musing on ‘winners’… two thoughts from yesterday…

Returning to our ‘old church’ in Derby…

I first attended there in 1968… It brought back many happy memories… Will talked about the brief Psalm 131. He described the calm confidence of a child that comes not through being in control, but in simple trust in a loving parent…

Will mentioned Charles Spurgeon’s words: ‘It is one of the shortest Psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn. It speaks of a young child, but it contains the experience of a man in Christ.’

It’s the paradoxical Jesus principle of maturity coming through being like children, strength coming through weakness, winning coming through losing…

Reading Henri Nouwen’s ‘The Wounded Healer’…

Nouwen talks about the work of a Christian leader or minister:

‘…pastoral conversation is not merely a skilful use of conversational techniques to manipulate people into the Kingdom of God, but a deep human encounter in which a man is willing to put his own faith and doubt, his own hope and despair, his own light and darkness at the disposal of others…’

Nouwen’s realistic. Life’s a mixture of success and failure, strength and weakness winning and losing. It’s about transparency, perspective, integrity…

Musing…

The message we often receive is ‘Be successful, self-confident, ambitious… be a winner.’ This needs to be balanced with the honesty and humility that says ‘Sometimes I’m a loser, but that’s OK…’ My losing makes me stronger… and can be put ‘at the disposal of others’.