Day Eight

Day Eight // March 5 // Competing & Comparing

“Don’t always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. ‘I will not Reason and Compare,’ said Blake; ‘my business is to Create.’ Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable.” – Brenda Ueland –

There is nothing more distasteful than when the fruit of peace goes bad, when it morphs into competing and comparing. Nothing can make us more miserable or sour our view of the world so fast. I grew up in a three high school city. My school was the “new school” that transitioned from a junior high. The only problem was that our facilities were not on par with the other schools in town. We had no auditorium or football stadium; our classrooms still had the feel of the elementary school our facility had once been years before. We had to borrow facilities from the other, more prominent schools when they were not using them. It was easy for us to get into the “that’s not fair” mindset. It was hard not to compare

ourselves to those who had more. The irony was: I went to a fabulous school with amazing teachers, and I got a quality education. We had the “more” but just didn’t realize it.

We do that too often. We spend too much time and too much energy comparing our lives to those around us. As if life were some sort of competition that can be won, we maneuver and we scheme to get ahead. We build bigger houses. We work 26 hours a day to get that corner office. We scrap and we scrape to compete with the Jones’ across the street, and all the while, the Jones’ are competing with us in this unending and selfdefeating sport of comparison.

In our incessant comparing, though, we fail to see and fail to celebrate what we have. We fail to see the blessings that abound in our lives. We become blind to all the things that we do have because all we see are those things that we don’t have. From the confines of her own blindness, Helen Keller once said, “Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.” How true and wise ring her words.

And into this mess, emerges the cross. The singular emblem of our faith, we wear it and champion it as a sign of victory; but what we forget is that the cross was not a

symbol of success but, in the eyes of the ancient world, it was one of failure. Its nature was cruel and brutal; it was the unenviable place for thieves and rebels, not for the Son of God. But that is how God chose to redeem the world: by comparative failure - in fact, by redeeming failure - and loss and grief and death. God chose to save the world not by winning the game but by losing it… and by that loss, God secured ultimate victory.