I sat with a new friend the other day over coffee. (What else would I be drinking.) This friend is about 18 months ahead me in the process of planting a church. As many of you know, Rachael and I are in the beginning stage of launching The Collectives. Always attempting to be a student, I asked the question of my friend “what have you learned that you can share with me?”
His response was simple and profound: “Do not let the highs get you too high. Do not let the lows take you too low.”
Great advice for a church planter. I think it is great advice for life. Life is filled with ups and downs. It has moments of wins and moments of loss. How we respond to each is just as important as the outcome. Wins are worth celebrating and shouting about. Yet, win you wake up the next day, that was yesterday’s win. Losses come, hits to life, jobs, and family will surely show up. Feel them and as my friends said “move on from there. Do not set up residence there.”
In honest reflection, oftentimes it has felt like I have taken more losses than the wins, because I pitched my tent and set up camp in the valley of my defeats. I stayed there. I made it my address. In the same way, it is next to impossible to stay on the mountain forever. Even Moses after 40 days in the very presence of God had to return to camp.
As a guy who grew up playing and watching a lot of baseball, this movie quote has rang true often: “sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” In the wins, losses, and rainouts, God is still God. God is still for me. To carry through the baseball analogy, you just need to dust yourself off and get back in the box.
A lot of high level athletes talk about short memories. The ability to forget the last shot, the last swing, the last throw. What is interesting is that they try to forget the miss and the make. They simply move forward to the next one. The apostle Paul wrote about his own sports psychology in the book of Philippians like this: “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Yesterday’s wins we celebrate. Yesterday’s losses we mourn. Today, oh today, there is work to do. So let’s get to it.
