What is success according to Jesus?  It is not about achievement, making money, building a business, saving people, or becoming famous and respected, though making money and accruing power are not bad things.  The question is "for whom and for what end" is the money and power accrued?  Trappings of success in our culture are neither good nor bad.  They are tools and it all depends on what you do with them.  Money is a tremendous tool when used to help people, restore justice, and support ministry.  Power is a tremendous tool when it is used to change injustice, inspire people, and move life toward shalom.  Success is "keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you."  ("If" by Rudyard Kipling)  Success is living awake to the Spirit, using what you've been given to love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to you're your neighbor as yourself.

What is failure?  Failure is not to be poor, unemployed, homeless, or a bad investor.  It is not to come in last or somewhere that's not first.  It is not to sit in the audience while the really talented people perform onstage!  Failure is not a matter of not succeeding and achieving, but of not trying, of giving in to our excuses and fears.  In Jesus' familiar parable about three servants who were entrusted by their master with sums of money, the third servant failed because he feared changing more than he valued the risk of invest himself.  He decided not to get involved and not to think outside the box.  He sought to avoid a responsibility he had not asked for and found himself in a hole. Then, he kept on digging!

            You and I have an opportunity to change our communities-even our faith communities.  We can model a pretty radical sense of inclusiveness, freedom, and passion for the life journey.  We can change the world by making things happen for the cause of justice.  We can help restore hope by crossing barriers of fear and prejudice, inspiring people out of their lethargy and also fight our own!

This is what we are poised to do, but we're not there yet!  We still tend to give in to fears and fatigue. We often fail to live fully in response to God's invitation and we struggle to trust that God is with us cheering us on. But God still calls us to join that struggle, to remember that invitation, to resist those fears, to push through that fatigue, and ultimately to trust the promise, "I am with you always."

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.  

--Jack F. Price

To read more by Jack, be sure to order your copy of Finding Faith: Honest Answers about God, the Bible, and the Church Today at:  www.findingfaithnow.com or www.lulu.com/buy (download available)

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