when you lose, God cheers

I will submit my new poetry book to the printers in the next week or two. pray for me? second round of mixes for the new album… this week I thought I’d write about something we’ve been chewing on at the Winters homestead, through the small window into the world of the World Cup1… (sorry for the semi-relevant content—I try to keep things irrelevant here lol. lemme know any thoughts it stirs in you)

Lane and I were joking that, if God is near to the brokenhearted, then whoever loses the World Cup game would be God’s favorite…

it doesn’t entirely makes sense, but it was funny.

and it does make some sense.2

let me splain…3

(and no I’m not going to make an argument that Argentina are God’s favorite… only that it seems like God loves a loser.)

upgrade to paid

I’m reading the sermon on the mount, the longest single block of Jesus’ teaching sans interruption (though I have to think, with all of the people present, there must have been a couple interruptions)…

in it, Jesus draws a distinction between those whose aim is to capture the attention of man, and those whose aim is to seek the attention of God.

he says repeatedly of those who seek the attention of man, that they have received their reward. and to those who have sought the attention of God, he promises that they shall receive their reward.

what a wonderful/terrifying/clarifying ray of light to check my own orientation… how am I orienting myself in the world? whose attention am I seeking?

as someone whose means of earning a living for my family depends somewhat on the attention of man, it can be difficult to thread the needle.

one of the writers of the book of Proverbs wrote the following, relevant prayer:

Do not make me poor or rich, but feed me with the food I need for each day.
If I have too much, I might say, “Who is Grandfather4?”
If I have too little, I might steal and bring shame to Creator’s name…5

Jesus describes a strange sense of blessedness in the gospel according to Matthew:

Creator’s blessing rests on the poor, the ones with broken spirits.
The good road from above is theirs to walk.
Creator’s blessing rests on the ones who walk a trail of tears,
for he will wipe away the tears from their eyes and comfort them.

who realizes that they are poor more than those who are acquainted with loss?

I don’t mean to make light of this concept by conflating Argentina’s loss with spiritual grief… but that sentence might only make sense if you don’t know how much these games mean around the world… if you don’t think people have been grieving in Argentina over the loss, here’s a little snippet6:

you know, the usual—just a couple of 22 year old university students, crying and comforting each other... listen to the themes:

• grief / crying

• remembrance of birth

• death (death of an era)

• emptiness

• seeking comfort

• identifying with others / Messi

• nostalgia

but this sadness, rightly received, can be a blessing…

(there’s a chance some of you might still think I’m joking, but I’m not. I’ll press on…)

we Americans (at least) tend to be people who shrug off our pain quickly. we tend to dismiss it, perhaps in an attempt to show how strong we are, that it didn’t hurt us that much, that we are undaunted, or maybe that our inconvenient needs don’t have to impinge on our lifestyle.

but how, with that level of self-reliance, can we receive the gift of loss?

for the sake of our toughness, or just a lack of acknowledging our pain points, will we shrug off the gift of compassion?

sometimes we might assume, when Jeremiah wrote down the oft-quoted lines “for I know the plans I have for you, to prosper you and not to harm you,” that God’s promise is for us to become wealthy and untouched by life’s pain.

but I want to suggest to us both that, maybe to God, prospering us isn’t him making us rich, but making us holy… and that we are quick to dismiss our adversity and disappointment as God’s means to make us holy.

I will confess that I don’t like this. I am not eager to sign up for this form of holiness by adversity. I would rather become a better person by doing what I want, but that doesn’t seem to work very well. God, teach me—but second-hand as much as possible… is how my prayers tend to skew. and there’s nothing wrong with gaining wisdom from others.

but if God’s “prospering” us meant gold and mansions, then why on earth would Jesus choose to enter into the suffering of others?

was Jesus being prospered / not harmed when his scandalized mother had to give birth in a barn / cave for animals?

was Jesus being prospered / not harmed when Herod sent men with knives to hunt him down as a baby?

was Jesus being prospered / not harmed when he had nowhere to lay his head, going from town to town, spending time with the sick, the demonized, the poor?

was Jesus being prospered / not harmed when he was scourged, when he was spat on, when he was hung on a cross?

the trouble is that we think God wants us to win, while he wants us to become good, to become holy.

and what means this holy?

depending on your background, the word “holy” might feel icky. maybe people around you used it only in a strict, knuckle-cracking way—a stick used to smack you towards some supposed good end. or maybe it feels icky, because it just sort of feels ethereal and woo-woo.

but it isn’t meant in that sense…

holy is an acknowledgment of family roots—God is my father.

holy is being set aside for God, and to leave aside what is common.

holy sees past the terrestrial bicker-battles and sees through to the eternal meaning and the core of things as they really are.

holy is transcendent beauty.

holy is a way of orienting ourselves in the world, an attention that invites the fullness of a God who looked at the world he created and said, It is very good.

and God is holy, and to be holy is to identify with him.

and I’m not trying to say that God loves Argentina more, but there are sorrows in this life that lead us, in our moments of clear-eyed sobriety, towards a God who wants to meet and comfort us. sadness can help move us from pretended self-sufficiency to acknowledging our need.

and this is good.

maybe this was the writer of Ecclesiastes had in mind when they wrote:

It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.

if things always worked out the way we wanted, and if nothing bad ever happened, well then the idea of holiness would seem silly to me.

but holiness is another way to reflect our nearness with God. and Jesus entered into our humanity so that we might participate in his divinity. he entered into both the high and low places of human experience that he might fill all things to the full. not just the places of honor and power, but the places of rejection and pain and loss.

and it’s in walking with God, leaning on him that we are made holy, that we experience his goodness and his nearness filling the highs and valleys of our lives.

and I hope that we are courageous in taking up the offer.

full disclosure: my wife, Lane, went to high school in Argentina. it was a formative time in her life and a big part of why our family speaks Spanish (and why we drink yerba mate). and even though this picture is of Pope John Paul II drinking a Brazilian form of mate (called chimarrão), it felt right.

thanks for being here. I write weekly sharing poetry, songs, musings, thoughts on creative life, and hopefully some encouragement…

my store is here. my collection of poetry, Snowmelt to Roots, is back in stock (yay)! my music & other merch are in my shop. and to listen to my music, go here.

you can still preorder my new album & poetry book here.

if you’re interested in having me out for a concert, a talk, a workshop, etc., please write to contact@zachwinters.com. new concert announcements will appear here (soon to come).

with gratitude,

Z