We can imagine winning or losing a race or some other challenge. Alternatively, we can also actually face the challenge and win or lose for real. However, whether imagined or real, victory and loss in this world are temporary in nature. They exist for a moment and then are history, though there are probably some residual effects. Jewish folklore attributes to Solomon the wise saying concerning all material conditions, whether positive or negative, “this, too, shall pass away.”
Now, for the most part, we humans like stability. (I say “for the most part” because we all need a bit of adventure to spice up our lives. And, there are those who take particular delight in creating chaos in the lives of others.) But, the exceptions notwithstanding, because we like stability we like routine, we like permanence, and we like what we can rely on in our lives. That explains one of the reasons we often relive our victories or losses – it helps to cement them in our hearts.
Winning and losing, however, are like leaves floating down a creek to the ocean, now here . . . now gone. And, realistically, there is only one thing in the world that is permanent; so we’ll get to that in a moment. But for now, let’s consider the mountains. They seem permanent. Yet they are changing even as they come into existence because of volcanic activity or the movement of a tectonic plate. Then, once they’re mature, they keep on changing as water, wind, heat and cold wear them away. And speaking of tectonic plates, they are responsible for moving entire continents around the globe. Nothing, it seems, is absolutely stable. Now, getting back to our win or loss, which, at the time seemed so important, it is the merest blip on the screen of cosmic time. And, of course, as Ps 103:15-16 point out, even our lives are not permanent.
As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.
Yes, we are impermanent, yet few of us want to die. We want to be permanent. And the reason for that according to Eccl 3:11, is that God has put eternity into our hearts. It is He alone that can satisfy our longing for permanence because He alone is permanent. His nature never changes. And neither does His Son’s because, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature,” (Heb 1:3 ESV). Another fact about God is that it is His pleasure to conform those who will cooperate with Him into the image of His perfect Son. (Ro 8:29) Yes, it is in partaking of Jesus’ nature (2 Pe 1:4) that we satisfy our hunger for permanence. Or, as Jesus put it, “…that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (Jn 3:16 MKJV) Or “life in abundance” as He said at Jn 10:10
Victory or loss in this world – temporary.
Victory in Christ – PERMANENT!
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