Success

It is easy to say one doesn’t justify the means before the destination is reached.  Life paints a very different picture.  “Win” at all costs is the motto for more teams than not in sports.  The attitude clearly infects most business organizations.  Even churches and not for profit organizations are not immune!  Once the goal is achieved celebrations begin.  No questions are asked about how we got here.  Examination and reflection are not welcomed at this point.  Every eye looks forward.  Rarely is anyone focused on the present much less the path which brought us here.
 
I would like to suggest we, you and I, are caught in the world’s way of looking at life.  Having aspirations goals is fine but they cannot interfere with results.  Principles and values are admirable.  Why should they be questioned when we have arrived at our destination?  Pay a price, dealing with pain, and even living with a casualty or two is simply the baggage one always assumes on the way to the top.  This is the way things are, right?
 
Taken to its extreme, any tool is acceptable.  When we hear “Zion women are stuck-up, prancing around in their high heels, making eyes at all the men in the street, swinging their hips, tossing their hair, gaudy and garish in cheap jewelry” (Isaiah 3.16) we know it is just a game. 
 
Or is it?
 
The God I know starts and finishes on the inside of our souls.  Steps matter.  Principles count.  Values determine everything.  Failure is acceptable as long as it is acknowledged and dealt with.  Achieving, winning, and arriving are more matters of the heart than of measuring results.  God is strong enough to not worry about individual battles.  It is the war which counts.  Looking at the big picture is not Divinity’s focus.  It is all about individuals.  Strategies and tactics are, in this context, only and always expressed and principles and values.  Without one the other does not exist.
 
We can be successful today, extremely so.  Anywhere, anytime, the choice and measure is within our grasp.