Daily Lesson for September 16, 2014

Today's lesson is from Psalm 62 verses 9 and 10:

9 Those of low estate are but a breath;
those of high estate are a delusion;
in the balances they go up;
they are together lighter than a breath.
10 Put no trust in extortion;
set no vain hopes on robbery;
if riches increase, set not your heart on them.

I've been thinking recently of a line in Rudyard Kipling's poem "If":

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same"

Maybe it's Tech football that has me thinking such things - triumph (albeit a feeble triumph) two weeks ago, disaster this past Saturday. And the fair weather fans (we're all fair weather fans) behave in our predictable ways - lauding our coach for the greatest ALS Icebucket Challenge/Recruiting video ever (did Beyonce say yes?) and a month later pummeling him for putting image over action. Everything we love about him when we win we hate about him when we lose.

What if, really, we were to meet Triumph and Disaster and to treat them each one as the impostors they are? Placing them each on the scales of eternity we would not be able to judge the difference - each as the psalm says,  "lighter than a breath." Which would be more Kliff Kingsbury, Darrel Royal, or the world's worst Pop Warner league coach who doesn't know a thing about football but who said yes because the kids needed a coach and he said yes - not because he likes football but because the kids needed a coach? Which would weigh more the Fortune 500 CEO who made the most of the breaks he got or the single mother working nights to raise three kids who never got a break at all? Whose life would mean more Victory or Survival?

What if, really, we were to stop ranking and ordering and judging and sizing and summing up others by all the weighted standards of the world? What if we were to meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat them both alike - neither as good nor as bad as they appear, and altogether just a breath.

If we were to begin seeing the world this differently then no doubt the stands would be a lot emptier; but I bet our hearts would be much much fuller.