Good Friday morning! The first victory of mine in a contest (that I can remember at least) came in the first grade. A kid named Gary Bishop and I got on a teeter-tooter and tried to buck each other off. I won. Gary fell off the other end at its highest point and hit the ground breaking his arm. I remember the teacher coming over and the other students in the class surrounding Gary while I was left alone. Some victory. Gary also got to wear this really neat cast for several weeks. After that, perhaps jealous of the attention he got, I wanted a cast too. It would be decades before I got my cast and then the world gave me double. Yup, casts on both arms. I got attention alright, more than I ever imagined, but once more I decided that my 'victory' was something I would rather have left alone. Of course these were not the only victories in my life, but I find it interesting how they relate with so many years separating the events. In neither case did I come off as heroic and the trophies were a bit on the depressing side. Not quite what the ol' daydreams had in mind I'm sure.
This world can be a tough place. Our victories may look a lot like defeats and the even the real awards can never satisfy. How many gold medal winners have left the Olympic training behind forever? How many Oscar winners have announced their retirement at the awards ceremony? How many lottery winners have stopped playing the lottery? In the cases where we think enough would be enough, it seems to never be enough for the winner. The cases where enough is quite more than enough, thank you very much, seem to be broken things, injuries, accidents, and other events that we might rather not be awarded. Yup, in case you haven't noticed it before, this fallen world seems to have a lot of things very backward-like.
So it kind of seems appropriate that the one great victory in this world came at a very inglorious, humiliating, and degrading execution. Not only all of that, but the 'victim' of this horrible death didn't hang around his stone-cold tomb waiting for the end of the world. Then, the way for those to share in this eternal life comes not by great accomplishments, but simply by accepting mercy and grace. In a way that seems most strange, we are saved in a seemingly backwards-like way by what would seem the ultimate form of defeat - death by criminal execution.
What a wonderful savior we have in Christ Jesus! The God who became a Son of Man, worked within the world to save the world, and then triumphed over the world's worst feature, death, to establish a Way that we might have eternal life. Praise God for the Son!
Bucky
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