Fail

How easy it is to succeed if we can only understand that sometimes that success looks like a fail to the outside world.

Christ before Pilate (Musero Dery)

I like to succeed.  Who does not?

It is an exhilarating feeling to know that I can be good at something and do well in something.  Perhaps because of how I was raised or the way that God created me, I become very driven by that feeling of success.

Now, success has looked like different things at different times in my life.  Sometimes success has looked like a good grade at school.  At other times, it was a promotion in a job.  Then it was related to my marriage and the happiness of my husband and children.  At other times success was measured by money – if there was enough of it, it was an indication of success and if there was not much it meant I was doing something wrong at work.

Sometimes, success has meant the kind words people said about me of the good thoughts they thought about me.  And I have been thinking about what success looked like for Christ.

On the night before He died, it appeared to the outside world that He was a dismal failure.  His disciples still did not really understand His message and were still misinterpreting it.  His followers deserted Him.  Nobody was saying anything nice to Him.  He had no money, no power and no decent “grades” so to speak.  And He was being unjustly judged.  Then He was arrested and locked up and later tortured and killed.

And yet – THAT was success.  THAT was His mission.  And despite how it looked to the outside world, He had succeeded…

And that makes me think.  After all, despite all the exhilaration of success, and despite all the benefit of success, I have failed.  And I have failed so badly…

I have so many things about me that appear wonderful on the outside, but beneath it all there is no cross, and there is no suffering.  There is only superficial substance-less nothing.  This is not to say that what I am doing is bad.  It is to say that the focus of all my earthly works must be eternity…

And if I could only just keep eternity fixed firmly into the forefront of my mind then I would be able to refocus on the most important things.  Only when I keep God at the front of my mind can I understand that instead of celebrating my own paltry successes, I can exalt in God’s.  After all, what God can do through me is infinite.  And what I can do in and of myself is so limited it would be as though an ant were to try to eat an elephant.

And I have been thinking about that as I have been thinking about success and failure.  After all, how easy it is to succeed if we can only understand that some times that success looks like a fail to the outside world.

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.