We live in a competitive world. In sports, it is best to be number one. In school, it is good to be the top of your class.

In the work world, it’s great to work your way up the ladder to the corner office with a view.

Some say that winning is the only way. As long as the winning attitude doesn’t include “not worrying about those
you have to step on along the way,” then it can be a healthy attitude. But to win at all costs can be a very dangerous
way of thinking because when some with that idea lose, it becomes unbearable.

I don’t like to lose either, However, in my life I have found that when I have lost at something, I have gained something
greater.

In the Gospel for this Sunday (listed above), loss is gain. To step away from the norm and leave behind that which is
safe, often one discovers something new and inspiring.

If I had won that coveted student body election, or, made the Babe Ruth All Star team, my life might have gone in a
totally different direction. If I had pursued other areas of study in college, I might have become an archeologist or
geologist instead of a pastor. If I had given up pursuing a particular young woman who at the time lived miles away
from me, I might have a whole different family situation (if I would have had a family at all!)

When the shepherd of the sheep left the ninety-nine sheep behind — he left a safe and secure place and ventured out alone
to find one measly sheep. The woman in the other story desperately cleaned and swept the house until she found the
one single coin that made her ten-coin collection complete again.

Often times in life, it’s only when we lose that we can gain the most precious things in this life–things we didn’t even
know existed or that we would appreciate so much later in life.

God’s love is just as desperate. It is so desperate that He would go to the great sacrificial length of the death of His
child, Jesus, to show His attitude of winning to all humanity. It would be in His unltimate loss that we–His precious
children–would find the greatest gain and victory. In death (that the world sees as defeat), God made it life, which is
winning at all costs on our behalf.

Go to church somewhere this Sunday and find this desperate love that God has for you. Trust in this love, an amazing love
that will search and search, until it finds you, no matter where you may have wandered off.

Know that God loves you and so do we!

Pastor Jim