FAIR-WEATHER JOY

One of my co-workers walked into the office this morning sporting a New York Giants hat. He wasn't alone: I saw a few people wearing Giants apparel in and around our building today. It was notable because in my approximately 1.8 years working in this office building, I don't recall ever seeing a single person wearing Giants gear. Then there were the countless people on Facebook changing their profile photos to show Giants logos and players.

I understood why this was, of course. The Giants won a thrilling game last night and earned a spot in the Super Bowl. The team's fans, though contributing nothing to the thing they were celebrating, had a right to boast and be happy. I couldn't help but grin at the sight of emerging Giants fans today, both online and off-line. While I didn't doubt their allegiance, I wondered why these fans didn't display such conspicuous pride for their team until today.

Then I began turning this lens on myself, the only fair thing to do. I began searching my own heart for this inclination toward timely, fair-weather pride, and it took me less than a minute to find it.

There's not a shade of doubt in my head or my heart that I love God. Though my actions and inactivity, my words and silence often betray otherwise, I do love him. He is the only good part of my life. No, actually, he is much more than that. Exclude "the only good part of" and that sentence rings truer. To call anything "good" apart from him is akin to calling today's weather "cupcakes." It's nonsensical, for apart from him I am not.

I am also certain that God has assured victory for me, and not an incremental one that takes me to yet another battle. He has defeated death -- the final opponent -- in all its forms. Depressions that seek to murder my soul, perversions that seek to rape my thoughts, false whispers that seek to seduce my pride -- these, and more, are all defanged. My God has destroyed all my opposition, everything that would seek to drag me away from my love to unimaginable perdition. Not only did he win, but he confers the benefits of his victory to me, though I had not a single mite to do with it. No, not even that: He grants me its glorious benefits though I was a lifeless heap of evil on the wrong side of the war. It's as if he conquered the opposite trench, animated one of the adversary's sand bags and awarded it a victor's homecoming.

Yes, all this he did for me. Yet, somehow, I fail to express sufficient joy in this. There are those rare days when I do sense this victory in a very real way, and on those occasions I may wear my allegiance to my good Father on my sleeve. But on most days, I do not sense this and go on with my life as one who does not have this victory to beat his chest about.

So, no, I don't scoff at Giants fans for donning their hats, jackets and new profile photos today. If not now, when?

I only wonder how such a small victory in an inconsequential game could draw such joy and pride from some, when an infinitely greater triumph in the only arena of life that matters could draw so little out of me.

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. (1 John 5:4-6 ESV)

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33 ESV)