Second Place

            The Sully Buttes Chargers girls basketball team finished second in the State B basketball tournament.  That’s a fine showing by any objective measure.  Still, if you’d asked the players or coaches after the championship game if they were happy they’d finished second, they’d have said no.  In fact, they were disappointed.  Their goal was not to finish second.  Their goal was to win. 

They tried hard.  They did the best they could.  At the time, though, that was not much consolation to them.  Maybe at some point it will be, but at the time, it was not.  When you take a sport seriously, you want to win.  Nobody wants to finish in second place.

As I thought about that, I thought about all the times in my life I finished in second place.  There seem to be an awful lot of them.  When I was in seventh grade, I entered a regional essay contest about the dangers of smoking.  I made it into the final three.  I finished second.  When I was in the eighth grade, I was in a regional spelling bee.  I made it into the final six.  I finished second.

In sports, it was the same.  The teener baseball team I played on was pretty good.  Twice, we made it to the regional tournament and thought we might get to the state.  Twice, we finished second.  Even my favorite NFL team, the Minnesota Vikings, has never won the championship.  They’ve finished second four times.

As a lawyer, I won some cases, but there were some I lost, too.  In other words, I finished second.  In a case I took to the state Supreme Court, two justices agreed with me.  Three did not.  I finished second.

It’s never any fun to finish second.  The NFL used to have a runner-up bowl, a game for the teams that finished second in each conference.  Vince Lombardi described it as “a hinky-dinky game played in a hinky-dinky town by hinky-dinky teams, because that’s what second place is:  hinky-dinky.”  Nobody wants a hinky-dinky second place finish.  We all want to win.

On the other hand:

As I’ve written before, when I look at my life today, I have to say it’s turned out pretty good.  I’m very happy.  Would I be happier today if I’d finished first some of those times I finished second?  I doubt it.  In fact, it’s possible that I’d be less happy.  Maybe, if I’d finished first, something would’ve happened that would’ve made my life turn out differently, and worse, than the way it has.

We all dream of having great victories.  We all want to win all the time.  God, though, does not ask us to win all the time.  Even Jesus did not win all the time.  There were people Jesus talked to who rejected him.  There were people Jesus healed who did not even bother to say thank you.  If even Jesus did not win all the time, why in the world would you and I expect to win all the time?  It’s not going to happen.

What God asks is that we be faithful, and that we do our best.  God asks that we do what we can, and leave the rest to God.  If we do what we’re supposed to do, God will do what God’s supposed to do, and things will work out the way they’re supposed to work out.  When we’re faithful, we don’t have to worry about the results, because we’re not responsible for the results.  God is.  We’re just responsible for being faithful and doing the best we can.

It’s okay to be disappointed when we don’t win.  Jesus was disappointed sometimes, too.  We always hope things will work out the way we want them to, and we’re never happy when they don’t.

We may not be happy when things don't work out the way we want them to, but we can accept it.  We can accept it because we know that ultimately, God is in control, and we know that ultimately, God will win.  You and I may have some losses along the way, but that’s okay.  Ultimately, God will win.  God’s the champion.  You and I just need to make sure we’re on the team.