Winners and Losers

This morning, when I awakened, I could not remember what day it was because, to the totally blind person, every day is the same; every season is the same. I wear a talking watch, which gives me the time when I push a button, and when I push another button, I get the day and the date. No one need try to imagine what it is like – only the blind know the reality of everything being in blackness all the time. This is the reason I am so secure in the assurance of my soul's salvation, because I do not want an eternity of tomorrows to be in absolute blackness, as we are told hell is all about. I look forward to that great surge of God's eternal brightness when the gates of pearl open wide for me. I can hardly imagine human beings (the only beings with a weightless, vision-less, without mass, soul), spiritual beings who live their entire life with the troubles and trials, pain and problems of earthly life, with only a future, after death, which is a certainty of darkness and despair.

The Beatles, in their famous song Yesterday, said, “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh I believe in yesterday.” We can still hear the young girl who played Annie, in the Broadway musical, singing, “The sun'll come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there'll be sun! “ Eleanor Roosevelt, perhaps as famous in her own right as the 32nd president of the United States, her husband FDR, once said, “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift.” TODAY IS TOMORROW THAT NEVER CAME. When you get my age, everyday is wrapped in a velvet box – a true gift.

Young people think that only old people die. Newspaper headlines everyday will tell you otherwise. When you go to any cemetery, there are as many short graves as there are long graves. If the millions of killed babies were buried, there would be many more. When I think of the magnificence of God's most important creation, the twenty three thousand genome human body – the genius of the makeup of the human body – it is almost beyond one's ability to comprehend. We struggle with rationalizing how any human brain could be so evil as to even think of snuffing out innocent life. But, to show what losers Satan has made of the winners of animal life: the very ones who commit murder and mayhem of adults and promote the euthanasia of innocent babies and expiring old people are the very ones who are in the front lines for protecting the rights of dogs, cats, turtles, alligators, snakes and even algae.

The matter of winners and losers has taken on a new twist as President Obama became winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. This man, the greatest promoter of the culture of death in the history of the United States, and one who has shown nothing yet in his promotion of peace or anything else for the good of the American people, is the best example we could offer in showing that losers have become winners. The Nobel Peace Prize had been defamed by its giving to Yasser Arafat, Jimmie Carter, and Al Gore but now it can be put in a Cracker Jack box. I hope the Heisman Trophy or Olympic Medals will not become so cheap. Knighthood in England, at one time, was a real honor, but the Queen has so cheapened this honor (Sir Elton John) that many now refuse to accept it.

Salvation, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, is for winners – not the pretension of losers. Diplomas and college degrees are still for winners – those willing to pay the price. Family values are still for winners – those who do not want to see their offspring become losers in Satan's traps. Good health is for winners – those who are not willing to risk the ingestion of harmful foods; willing to exercise and keep a sound, fit body. Manners are for winners. There is still a need for class; for human beings who know how to act, not only in public but at home. People who believe that human action and reaction – with compassion and kindness – is a sure sign of winners or losers.

Unless it is an Academy Award or some other resplendent mockery by popular vote hatched up in Hollywood or Oslo an award seems to mean little to anyone anymore. For many years, I have given thousands of dollars each year in awards and scholarships at one Christian college (a college I did not attend) and to one Christian denomination (a denomination to which I do not belong). Of the hundreds, I could count on my fingers the number of times, I have received a letter of appreciation. In order that you do not think I am bluffing, some of the awards are as follows: 2-$3,000 awards each year for outstanding graduating seniors, a $4,000 award each year for outstanding faculty, $3,000 award each year for outstanding staff members, 2 - $2,500 awards each year for outstanding pastors, a large scholarship in honor of my mother, etc. One would think that an award given by a frugal-living blind man of his limited income would be an honor. Only twice, in all these years, has a recipient come to my front door to thank me in person. I said to a long-time bookkeeper one time, who knew how many college students I had employed in various businesses I had owned, “I cannot understand why they are so unappreciative of everything.” She said, “They don't even appreciate their parents – why should they appreciate you?”

To the uninitiated, everything is obscure. My father told me I would know how to take care of a car when I had paid for one myself. Today's young people will be winners or losers when they learn that today is all they have. Make the best of today. It is very wise to prepare for tomorrow. But in all your preparations, don't forget evaluations and appreciations. Long ago, the successor to Moses, General Joshua, said to the children of Israel, “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." (Joshua 24:15)