From my weekly article at WorldMag.com:
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| photo credit: roxweb via photopin cc |
Extra innings, complete games, walk-off hits, beanballs, and human pile-ups between the pitcher’s mound and home plate—yep, it must be playoff baseball time. Teams are fighting for their seasons, and the number of survivors is dwindling. It took 162 regular season games to earn a spot in the playoffs, and now teams are never more than four games away from elimination. And in the end there will be a single winner and 29 teams left empty-handed and disappointed.
This is why competition is so gripping—something is at stake, great gains and great losses rest in the balance. It creates much tension and drama and makes for great entertainment as the narrative plays out. To watch a hard-fought seven-game series in October is to be carried through a dynamic tale. In the end there is a winner and a loser, happy and sad, fulfilled, and hollow.
As gripping as these series are, it reminds me how thankful I am that all of life is not a playoff series. Yes, aspects of life have winners and losers, and in much of what we do the stakes are high and the competition keen. And we should always strive for excellence and endeavor to be the best at whatever we do. But the aspects of life that matter most function on an entirely different value system.
Imagine if we, as God’s children, faced a do-or-die task to matter in His eyes, succeed or else.
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