• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are
• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are edited. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week the suggested topic is service . The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.
Dr. Robert Merkle,
retired clergyman
United Church of Christ
The pure essence behind the desire to win is the desire to give form in a product, service or art form to timeless qualities like perfection, beauty, love, symmetry, compassion, purity, and durability. The obvious and immediate evidence of success in this endeavor is a temporary “win” over those forms of expression that are less successful. Michelangelo, Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael Jordan and especially Jesus Christ, in his “masterful work of lived art,” are all examples of winning in the timeless perspective.
In contrast, a temporary perspective on winning is the desire to defeat or be superior to the opposition. There is an old saying: “Without major victories we major in minor ones.” Major victories occur when we give expression to timeless qualities; minor victories occur when we overcome the temporary opposition. Every minor victory is temporary. Jesus taught, “Labor not after the things that perish…”
In the timeless perspective, winning is catching recurring glimpses of the eternal nature of reality. We repeatedly lose this perspective, but can regularly recapture it. The timeless perspective as compared to the temporary is like seeing in daylight as compared to seeing in the dark. “To those who have, more shall be given; but to those who have not, even the little they have shall be taken from them.”
We are able to see only that to which we pay our greatest attention. When paying attention to beauty, goodness, compassion, perfection, purity, etc., removing those things that distract from such realities, the by-products, which are temporary “winnings,” are “those other things added unto us.”
Pastor Wayne Patton
Anahola Baptist Church
It happens every four years. Athletes from around the globe winning the gold at the Olympic games. The Apostle Paul gives us biblical warrant for using athletics to draw spiritual lessons on winning when he told the Corinthians to run the race in such a way as to obtain the winning prize. What are some of those lessons?
Winning means meeting with the Coach (God) each morning. Champions for God devote their morning hours to spending time with Him. As Henry Ward Beecher said, “The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.”
Winning means persevering through difficulties. In one of his famous fireside chats, FDR said, “These are difficult days, but they are not dark ones.” The Christian has many difficult days, but they are not dark ones. We must keep on going until the prize is won.
Winning means nurturing the right friends. The famous Olympian Jesse Owens became the best man at the wedding of the son of his former arch competitor and rival, Lutz Long. That tells us to carefully guard and nourish our friendships. The Bible says that love never fails; it wins.
Winning means finishing well by keeping our eyes on the prize to the end. We need to run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
Rebecca DeRoos
Science of Mind Practitioner
Once a goal is set creativity and excitement begin. The adventure begins through asking, listening, recognizing and accepting our win.
God cares for us more than we can possibly imagine. As Emmet Fox said, “God can help you in proportion to the degree in which you worship Him. You worship God by really putting your trust in Him instead of in outer conditions or in fear or in depression or in seeming dangers.” Winning is our God-given reality — should we choose to recognize it and accept it.
Karen Brailsford, a SOM practitioner suggests, “The challenge then becomes not to elicit an answer… but to know what to ask and how to listen.” Winning occurs in the listening and accepting.
Gen: 18:14 “Is anything too hard for the Lord.”
Kahu James Fung
Lihu‘e Christian Church
Winning means everything if the name of the game is competition. And it just might be that competition is too much a part of the values of our culture.
Let’s face it, it’s an essential part of our market-driven economy. Athletes are among our highest paid celebrities, networks compete for viewers, game shows on TV are the big thing. Everybody’s out to “beat the competition”.
Winning in the game of life is a tricky thing. Remember the story of the man who, when beating the competition in the corporate world, climbed his way to the top only to discover, too late, that his ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.
The teaching and the example of Jesus, seek to awaken us to the irony of winning. We can win the wrong things, for the wrong reasons, in the wrong way, with the wrong spirit, and win in the things that matter least. We lose out at what’s really important in life and that’s the hardest lesson to learn. The truly blessed, are those who learn that winning trinkets and gaining the hollow applause of the unenlightened masses can divert us from that which is truly important in the nobler and loftier race of life. And what exactly is this loftier and nobler enterprise?
At the end of our earthly life, what is it that really mattered? Is it the games you played and won, or is it something else? Isn’t the respect of people of good character and having that deep inner peace and satisfaction that, in life, you did the right things, for the right reasons, at the right time, in the right way, with the right spirit what’s really worth winning?
St. Paul said, run the good race, the race of life that we might win the victors laurels but not the wreath made of leaves and flowers that adorn the winners head, but a spiritual crown that is eternal. Winning at life is about having discovered what really matters and giving your all so that at life’s end there will be few regrets. It is about knowing that God gave you the precious gift of life and that you embraced it with joy and thanksgiving.
Topic for two
weeks from today
• Will you speak to us on simplicity?
•Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com.
• Deadline each week is 5 p.m. Tuesday.