Article index	August 2009
	You only sing when you’re winning…

So, Wolves are Premiership, and the season’s about to begin. It’s all very exciting for a ‘Johnny come lately’ supporter like me - a lot better than following Boston United!

But what are we looking forward to? The big hope is that Wolves will stay up - but even if they do, we may lose more times than we win. How are going to cope with losing so often? Will it be all doom and gloom down at the Molineux?

Are there other areas of our lives, apart from football,  where we only sing when we’re winning - where we success to make us happy? Maybe our careers. Maybe in our family life, and in the success of our children. Maybe in our church life - is ‘going for growth’ our only aim?

If we are doing well, then everything’s rosy. What about when things go wrong? When the credit crunch threatens our job. When our family falls apart. When church life is challenging and all our efforts produce few results. How do we deal with that?

It can be a particular problem for those who are religious - especially if we have co-opted God onto our side. He was the one who was blessing us - now he’s let us down. But take a look at the career path of Jesus. He wasn’t a wolf - he was a lamb, sent to the slaughter. His popularity evaporated, and he was torn apart. It did come right in the end - but only through complete dependence on God.

If we invest all our sense of wellbeing in our success, then when things go wrong, we will lose it all. Jesus found his sense of identity not in what he achieved, but in the one who loved him, who called him his son. Knowing that we are loved and valued by those around us - and knowing that God loves us unconditionally - can help us to treat those two impostors, triumph and disaster, with a measure of detachment.

So we may rejoice when things go well - in our own lives, and in our church life - but that isn’t the only source of happiness. ‘How happy are they who know their need of God,’ says Jesus.  Sometimes it takes failure to help us discover that God’s well of life gives a joy greater  even than the excitement of promotion. And wherever we are in the league table of life, we can drink deep of his love for us.

Simon Witcombe