Who Wants to be a Winner?

Yesterday I was working in my garden. I couldn't help but overhear the children playing in the neighborhood. Three girls were riding their scooters up and down the street. It was friendly, little giggly-girls play, until the competition began. They started racing down the hill and around the cul-de-sac. Each time someone would shout out the rules and call the ready-set-go, they would take off! Occasionally one girl would take off and the other two wouldn't go. The one who was suppose to give the "Go!" would claim she didn't really say "Go!" she said some other word, like bologna. (Let's at least be creative. That doesn't even sound like "go".)

Eventually one girl stops riding, but is still heavy into competition in whole new way. She stands at the bottom of the gradually sloping hill and calls out the new orders. She gives direction to each rider. The racing continues, but the two riders have different paths to follow. In the end there is a loser and a winner. The loser is overwhelmed with the game, quits and sadly trudges home. It was an unfair race.

The one who gave the orders was the Queen of the Competition and she comes out the ultimate winner, or so she thinks. She was in control of the game! She had the power! I honestly could not identify a winner in this type of play. Everyone lost or at the very least came out a little more broken.

Why do we play like that? Childhood games, you say? A little healthy competition? I would contend that in all our sophisticated grown up ways we play the same kind of games. We want to win and we most certainly want the power. I am struggling to understand how it is healthy on any level.

I am not competitive by nature. When I partake in games for the most part I am just not that invested and don't care whether I win or lose. It is just a game, after all and doesn't affect the living out of the rest of my life, except perhaps to give me bragging rights, but who REALLY cares about that? If I am honest at the deepest level of my heart and soul, though, I want to "feel" like a winner. I want to have significance. There are probably games I play in my own mind at the very least about wanting to look like a winner. I am so very human, depraved at best. Oh, that I could live in light of these words. I am who I am because He has purposed it. No amount of game play will make me a winner.

"Therefore consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken from him." Luke 18:8

He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight." Luke 16:5

"For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you." Romans 12:3

"Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature." Romans 13:14

"If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself." Galations 6:3

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." Phillipians 4:8