One of my favorite quotes from the New Testament of the Holy Bible is “Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place” (II Corinthians 2:14). It is filled with the promise of victory—the assurance that triumph is inevitable for every one of us, right here, right now, always.
I felt I grew to understand these truths more fully while working as a teacher, coach, and theater director at the high school level. Before any competition or performance, I regularly prayed to understand that our team’s purpose was to grow spiritually—not to win or to be defeated, or to get a good or bad review. With this approach athletes often showed improved statistics on the court, beating personal and team bests—regardless of the win-loss outcome. Student actors refined their process, without being dependent on audience response to assess their work. We often left the competition or the performance with an increased sense of worth, even when we weren’t the ones to take home the trophy or if we did not get a standing ovation. I remember one volleyball tournament where we played in the championship match. We ended up getting second place, but our team learned a lot that day, as we transformed from opinionated individuals to a cohesive unit. We had triumphed.
As my career expanded, I continued to understand more deeply that triumph is the only possible outcome when we demonstrate the truth that Christ Jesus taught us in our daily lives. The meaning of the word triumph includes the joy or satisfaction resulting from success or an act of victory, and it became clear to me that true success is not based on a material rating system involving popularity, wealth, or human approval. True success is measured on a divine scale, with spiritual growth as our unit of measurement. So no matter how much struggle we may seem to encounter, we are successful when the experience leads us to understand and prove our relationship to God more fully. This is spiritual growth. This is success. Joy and satisfaction evolve from what we know to be our foundation, our basis of being. In Mary Baker Eddy’s poem “Satisfied,” these ideas resonate:
