may you experience the JOY of being WINLESS!

When I was in elementary school, I played little league. One year I was on the Braves! Our team colors were purple and I had two friends from school (twins in fact) who were on my team. Their dad was our coach and I was so excited about what promise the season held for us. As we finished our first game, with a loss, I still had fun playing with my friends in an "official" game. Next week's game arrived and departed without adding a point to our win column. Week three, another loss. Week four, five, and all but the last game, losses! We were winless. We couldn't win a game if our lives depended on it. Finally, the last week of games was upon us and we were playing the number one team in our division. They were undefeated. There was little hope of us squeaking out a win before we received our compulsory trophies. But the moon and stars were aligned, someone must have kissed the blarney stone for us, and God had mercy on the Braves. We won. We actually beat the undefeated team for our only win. We were so excited. But the amazing thing was, we didn't need that win to experience joy. Of course we loved ending the season beating the team that no one else could, but we just loved playing the game together (kinda like the Bad News Bears). The joy was in the playing. Now that's a novel thought. We need to remember that joy doesn't come from being victorious in our endeavors, but rather in the endeavors themselves. Getting there is really half the fun (actually more than half)!

NOTE: if you attend the RISING, this is similar to the preview that will appear on the RISING blog tomorrow. But go ahead and listen to it too, just because I took the time to make it. Or at least I'm going to. I'll try to give it a little something extra to make it more fun.

Tony