Pastoral Letter
Dear Friends,
I am writing to you on the Sunday when Andy Murrey has just won the Queen's tournament, and all our hopes are now pinned on him winning Wimbledon. July is always a great sporting month, and this year, in addition to Wimbledon, we have the Ashes tests to look forward to. In many ways we pin our hopes on our sporting celebrities. We want to bask in their glory and their success, and success means everything to them too. "I have put my whole life into winning this cup and now I've got it, it's indescribable," said Jonny Wilkinson, clutching the Webb Ellis trophy to himself. Sports personalities are desperately hungry for success, and this it what drives them on.
The fact is, however, that in any competition, for every winner there are a huge number of losers. As St. Paul points out in his first letter to the Corinthians. 'Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?' (1 Corinthians 9:24) St. Paul is reminding us that success is a very elusive thing. At one moment a sporting personality can be a national hero, the next moment he/she can be a huge disappointment.
St Paul was thinking about the Roman Games of his time when he wrote 'Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last.'(1 Corinthians 9:25) He reminds us that in sporting achievement there is such a fine margin between success and failure, and one week's winner can be the next week's loser. So how do we cope with failure as well as success? Eric Liddell, in preparing for the 1924 Paris Olympics, where, against all the odds, he won an athletics gold medal in the 400 metres in a world record time, spoke publicly for the first time about his faith in Christ in a small town hall in Armadale in Scotland. He spoke of the strength he felt within himself from the sure knowledge of God's love and support. How he never questioned anything that happened either to himself or to others. He didn't need explanations from God. He simply believed in Him and accepted whatever came. Eric Liddell demonstrated in his life that what really mattered most was not winning or losing, but trusting in Jesus Christ.
St. Paul sums up Eric Liddell's philosophy beautifully in his letter to the Philippians: 'I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.'(Philippians 3:10-14)
That is the real measure of success in life for us all, to take hold of that prize which Jesus Christ has already won for us.
May God bless you all,