Everyone Gets a Trophy
By Doug Bing, Washington Conference president
There are many sports leagues in our society.
Many of them are the typical league where there are winners and losers. The winners all get a trophy and the losers go home with nothing. That is the normal way of doing things.
Of course, there are other leagues where they don’t even really keep score, they don’t have a win-loss column, and at the end of the season everyone gets a trophy. I have heard a few jokes about those leagues and discussion about if those leagues even teach children the reality of this world. I suppose we could have all sorts of discussions about what to teach children in this world and how the world works. It can be a cruel world of winners and losers.
However, aren’t we of a different world?
Paul brings out the different way Christ offers to us in this world.
Do you know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore, I run thus; not with uncertainty. Thus I fight; not as one who beats the air.
God believes that everyone who wants one gets a trophy.
God’s world is one where if you are in the game you get a trophy. If you are walking with God, you get that crown. God wants everyone to be a winner and He has made that a certainty.
What does it take? Jesus said it simply. Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.
When we do those things, we are in the game and will be totally involved. Will there be hard times? Of course.
In the book Sketches from the Life of Paul, Ellen White wrote,
IF men will voluntarily submit to hardships, privations, and self-denial to secure the perishable reward of worldly distinction, how much more should the Christian be willing to do and to suffer for the sake of obtaining the crown of glory that fadeth not away, and the life which runs parallel with the life of God.
We are all called to be totally involved with God’s mission for this world. That walk with God and love for his created beings will lead us to share God and His soon return and more crowns of glory to be handed out.