Loving or Winning?

"Because a loveless world," said Jesus, "is a sightless world." John 14:23 (MsgB)

“Storyteller Bill Harley tells a simple story about a children's T-ball game he witnessed a few years ago. On one of the T-ball teams was a young girl named Tracy. Tracy ran with a limp. She couldn't hit the ball to save her life. But everyone cheered for her anyway. Finally, in her team's last game, Tracy did the unthinkable. She hit the ball. Tracy's coach began hollering for her to run the bases. She landed on first base, only to be told to keep on running. She rounded second base, and the fans stood to their feet and cheered. With one voice, they were all urging Tracy to head home. But as she neared third base, Tracy noticed an old dog that had loped onto the field. It was sitting near the baseline between third plate and home. Moments away from her first home run, Tracy made a momentous decision. She knelt in the dirt and hugged the dog. Tracy never made it to home plate. But the fans cheered for her anyway. Tracy had made her priorities clear. Love was more important than winning.” Billy D. Strayhorn, Luxuriate In God's Grace

I read this story and it kind of stuck in my mind over the last week or so. The story made me ask a question of myself, do I value love more than winning? It’s a good question. We say we love all kinds of things. We proclaim our love in all sorts of ways. Love is a good thing. It’s something we want to receive and to give to others. But we also value winning. We are competitive people. Sometimes we act as though the end justifies the means to the end. This means, it doesn’t matter how we win, but that we win. Where is the love in that kind of winning? I don’t know if I would have even seen the dog, if I was rounding the bases. My vision would have been reduced to home plate and getting there no matter what the cost.

We are busy people. September has brought not only a crispness to the air, but calendars over flowing with commitments. Sometimes as we move from one practice to the next, from one game to the next, we lose our prospective and our goal becomes to just get it done, to just cross home plate. What if we were to expand our vision and include love in our daily routine? What kind of dogs would we see along our base lines? Who or what are we missing in our rush to run the bases of our daily schedule? If you would see love sitting there, would you stop and give it a hug? Is love more important than winning in your life? We may all say yes, but what do your actions say?

To say we would choose love over winning is easy, but to stop as were running towards home plate, and not win because we chose love. Well, that is something else. It’s not something we see very often. And yet, as Christians, we gather each week on Sunday, the day of resurrection, to worship Jesus who chose to love this world rather than win it with power and strength. We are invited to slow down and open our eyes and see with new vision, a world, a community, a person who needs our love.

The amazing truth is that when we choose love, we win. Maybe not the way we thought we would win, but we win, because love changes us as winning never can. Love opens our hearts, our compassion, and our very lives as nothing else. Will you open your field of vision to see with eyes of love? Will you stop against all odds and share an act of love with someone, as you run through your daily schedule? If you do, you will find yourself following in the footsteps of Jesus who has gone before you, who walks with you now and promises to walk with you forever. This kind of love changes not just our priorities, it changes us.