Searching for Success
“Therefore hearken unto me ye men of understanding: far be it from God, that he should do wickedness; and from the Almighty, that he should commit iniquity.” Job 34:10 KJV
I guess success can be described in a number of different ways. One of the biggest problems we often face is that we really don’t recognize success when it comes. It’s not wrapped in some nicely decorated box with a big bow.
Too often we are looking over our shoulders sensing failure is looming. Success is shouting, “Look at me! Look at me!” We can’t hear him because our own voices are shouting louder inside us, “Look over there, I see failure. Wait, it moved over there.”
My own life seemed to be one failure after another. I dropped out of college and had to fall back on my summer job as a career. There was a business I started and people didn’t pay me for my work. I had to close it. Let’s add a failed marriage on top of that.
It makes for a very gloomy life when it is all full of failure. Another thing about failure, it seems like when he is hanging around, he calls all his friends to come over and play, too. One failure jumping on your back is bad enough, having two, three, or even more failures jumping on you at one time might be fun for them, but it is devastating for you.
Whether you like it or not, you become more somber than Eeyore, the donkey of Winnie the Pooh fame, when failure strikes. A little dark cloud follows you around blocking out all your sunlight. You just can’t seem to catch a break.
The truth is, failure is just success without the lights on. Failure is like the warning on your car’s side mirror: “Things appear closer than they really are.” Success is the same distance away, but it is sometimes harder to believe that is the case.
It’s about this time of year many of us get excited about the start of the baseball season. As popular as baseball is in America, it’s hard to believe, that at one time, it struggled to find an audience.
There is some dispute as to who actually “invented” baseball, but most give Abner Doubleday the credit. Wikipedia states: “The earliest known mention of baseball in the US is either a 1786 diary by a Princeton student who describes playing ‘baste ball,’ or a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts ordinance that barred the playing of baseball within 80 yards of the town meeting house and its glass windows.” Either of those would have been over 25-years before Doubleday was born on June 26, 1819.
Maybe it is the fact that Doubleday was a Union major general during the Civil War that promoted the idea of him being the inventor of baseball. After all, he did fire the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter, which many consider the start of the Civil War. He also played a major role in the battle at Gettysburg. Now that would give baseball an all-American feel, wouldn’t it?
Historian John Thorn coined the term “father of the game” for Doubleday. Unfortunately for Abner, that was fifteen years after Doubleday’s death. Still, before the Civil War, baseball was in a tough competition for America’s attention with things like cricket and regional versions of baseball.
By 1866, some guys, three in fact, were being paid in this still amateur sport. This caused quite the fuss, but by 1869 the NABBP, the National Association of Base Ball Players, started forming rules for what would become a professional sport.
Eventually, two rival leagues, the American and National Leagues, would fight to be the dominant forces in the professional baseball world. These two leagues’ early years were highlighted by low scoring games because there were great pitchers like Walter Johnson, Cy Young, and Grover Cleveland Alexander who dominated the game.
Still, like most businesses, baseball needed some gimmicks to get paying fans to come to their games. Clark Griffith, the owner of the then Washington Senators, came up with a very unique idea, at that time, to do just that.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” could be heard over and over again. It’s really a bold statement to make if you think about it. Does anyone really not do anything wrong? Still, this Bible character wanted his day in court.
When bad things happen, often our first reaction is to shout how much we don’t deserve it. The second thing we often do is to compare ourselves to others. It’s like we are trying to say, we don’t deserve these bad things happening to us, but why doesn’t it happen to someone who does “deserve” it?
Let’s look at the first one: we don’t deserve it. When most of us start a new job, we are given tasks that, quite frankly, if we had a choice, we would not chose to do. “We aced the interview, got the job, and showed up for the first day of work early. Why does the boss seemingly want us to prove ourselves?” seems to be the thought that enters our minds.
The boss isn’t usually picking on us and there could be many reasons why he is getting us to do something. Maybe he is giving us a smaller task now to see if we will be able to handle a bigger task later. It could be he is double checking our integrity. Sure we said we could do it in the interview, but let’s see if you can actually do it in a real situation.
There’s also the possibility that the boss is trying to check our attitude. Are you going to argue or get an attitude or even complain about a task you are given or are you going to do whatever it takes to make the situation or the company be its best? Of course, there is also the possibility that you were asked to do a task just because the task needed to be done.
Okay, let’s tackle the other part of it: why is it happening to me and not someone else? Let’s say for a moment, God decides to give you what you would consider the perfect life. The only condition of this “perfect life” is that you had to pick someone to deflect the bad things that were supposed to happen to you.
More than likely, you would probably pick someone you don’t know or someone who has wronged you. Let’s put all the bad things on the criminal we saw on TV. Yeah, he deserves it. Do you know all of his story?
Okay, okay, maybe we should limit it to someone who has “wronged” us. We know they did something bad to us, now they deserve to be zapped with the pain that was headed in our direction. The thing I noticed in my life is that my pain doesn’t always “bother” someone else like it bothers me. What’s the sense in sending it to someone else if it doesn’t cause them pain?
Now let’s look at what happens if you aren’t one of God’s “favorites.” What happens if God let’s someone toss their pain on someone else? What if that person chooses you? What’s fair, is fair.
We know things about God, and one of those is He doesn’t have favorites. He loves us all the same. In fact, He sent His Son to die, not just for Wayne, but for everyone. That everyone includes that criminal we talked about earlier.
Like I mentioned above, I had to drop out of college. During the summers between my college years, I worked as a plumber’s helper. I did all the plumbing jobs that didn’t require a lot of thinking or training. They also were the ones no one else wanted to do. I carried heavy stuff, cleaned pipe, picked up trash, went and got lunch, and just about anything else the foreman could pawn off on me.
I was a great plumber’s helper, if for no other reason than I did what I was told without questioning. Whether it was moving a pile of trash or toting a toilet up a high-riser’s steps, I did it with such enthusiasm that I probably convinced everyone around me that I really enjoyed doing it. That was far from the truth.
Still, I was good at it and because of that I was quickly employed as a full-time plumber’s helper when I decided not to go back to school. Soon I was enrolled in plumbing school. They let me skip the first year of the four year program. The last two years I got the highest grades in the class.
With all that, you would think I would feel successful. I didn’t. You see, I failed to finish college and that caused me to label myself a failure. Sure I was doing well, but it was in a fall back career.
One of the biggest problems with doing plumbing work is that everyone, at one time or another, has plumbing problems. You don’t become friends with people. They become “friends” when they need one of their plumbing problems fixed.
The first time I felt success in the plumbing field was actually when I was a salesman for a plumbing wholesaler. I was talking to one of my customers when the topic turned toward some small talk. This is when our conversation turned to jobs we had in the past.
I told the customer that I used to be a plumber. He said, “You were a plumber?” My insides jumped up and down with joy. The party going on inside my mind was shouting, “Do you know how long I wanted to be known as Wayne and not be known as The Plumber?”
Baseball’s Washington Senators’ owner, Clark Griffith, decided that one way to lure fans to his stadium to see games was to get a celebrity to throw out the first pitch of the game. Since his team’s home was in Washington DC, what a better celebrity than the President of the United States.
So Griffith invited President Grover Cleveland. You would think that Cleveland would be quite honored to become the first President to throw out the first pitch. Cleveland didn’t think so. The President sent his reply: “What do you imagine the American people would think of me if I wasted my time at a ballgame?”
Griffith refused to give up. Next, he gave a golden pass to Theodore Roosevelt to attend games. Teddy never attended a game.
Switching gears, Griffith thought maybe he could make his offer more enticing if he built a special President Box for opening day. President William McKinley was a no-show.
Being one stubborn man, Griffith would not give up on his idea. The Senators were to play the Boston Red Sox. Walter Johnson, of the Senators, was to be the star starting pitcher. What a perfect idea: have the President of the United States throw out the first pitch to one of the premium stars of the game.
The then current President agreed to do it. Griffith had a special box built to accommodate the 300 pound Presidential frame of President William Howard Taft. Taft was extremely honored by the request and, of course, getting to throw the ball to Walter Johnson was just icing on the cake.
But one big problem developed. Johnson was shy and didn’t want the attention focused on him. He told Griffith he needed to get someone else to receive the President’s pitch. Washington manager, Jimmy McAleer, asked catcher Gabby Street if he would do it. Street said he would be honored.
This turn of events must have been very disappointing for President Taft. Street stood on the field as Johnson stood near the pitcher’s mound, out of the spotlight. Then Taft surprised everyone. Taft turned his huge frame in Johnson’s direction. Putting all his effort into the throw, Taft threw the ball out to Johnson. The surprised Johnson caught it.
Walter Johnson later admitted that we was honored and touched by the President’s gesture. He even sent the ball to the White House for Taft to autograph it for him. Taft was honored to do it. Every President since, with the exception of Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, has thrown out an opening pitch while they were President. Carter would eventually throw out one when he left the Presidency. Current President, Joe Biden really hasn’t been in office long enough to get his chance yet.
The Bible spends 42 chapters exploring part of our Bible character’s life. If you have had the privilege of reading that Book of the Bible, congratulations, that’s some tough reading. You see, this character lived a much privileged life. He was in want of nothing.
I’m sure the character worked hard to get where he got in his life. It sounds like he had everything anyone could ever want. He had money, houses, servants, children, and many people who loved and admired him. He even appears to have a great relationship with God. Who could ask for anything more?
Well, there was someone who could ask for more for our Bible character: the devil. You see, God was very proud of our Bible character. The devil tells God, “Of course he loves You. You spoil him. You give him everything.”
God tells the devil he is wrong. “Go ahead, take it all away. You will see that he still loves Me,” God replies. So the devil sets out to prove God wrong. There was one person left out of this process and that was our Bible character: Job.
So Job sits through this long Bible Book trying to figure out why God is “doing this” to him. Over and over again Job demands an audience with God to prove he doesn’t deserve all the bad things that are happening to him.
Job has three friends, and then a fourth, who tried to explain to Job: he must have done something wrong and he needs to figure out what it is and apologize to God. They almost assure him that if he does this, he will completely be restored. Job sticks to his guns that he hasn’t done anything wrong.
Job finally has his audience with God. It doesn’t go anything like Job thought it would. Job, with all his “proofs” that he hasn’t done anything, doesn’t have much of an opportunity to convince God that he has been unjustly treated.
God doesn’t answer any of the questions that Job declares he would ask God, if God were to only listen. Job doesn’t even have the opportunity to ask God the questions. What does God say then? His answer to Job is basically, “I don’t have to explain anything to you! I’m God, not you.”
So the Book ends with Job, and us, pretty much still confused as to why God lets the bad things happen. A better way to look at it is that God gives us the life we have. Whether things are good or bad is not for us to determine.
Our lives give us opportunities and God believes in us enough that He knows we are completely capable of handling any of the challenges we face. Just like a proud parent, He wants our lives to have something He can brag about. In fact, He may be telling the devil this minute, “Go ahead and try them, they will prove to you that they love Me.”
It seemed everywhere I turned I could see failure. The other day a different thought entered my mind. It related to a bread salesman.
You see, this bread salesman lost his father when he was five-years-old. This was at a time when not many women were in the work force. Since there were several kids in his family, his father’s death forced his mom back out into the work world.
As hard as his mom tried, she just couldn’t make it work for the family unit. She was forced to put some of the kids in a children’s home for a little while. Unfortunately, he was one of those picked to go. His mom worked real hard and eventually got all the kids back together. Still, that experience must have lingered on his mind for the rest of his life.
The future bread man would drop out of high school, but would later earn his GED. He would join the Navy. While stationed in Maryland he would fall in love with a beautiful young girl and they would get married. They would eventually have three children.
This bread salesman was my father, who recently passed away. When I was at his funeral, many people came up to me and told me how much my father meant to them and they would go on and on about all the things he did for them. Not once did I hear a story about him being a bread salesman. There was not a mention of him dropping out of high school. Hardly anyone would have even known he was once sent to a children’s home.
Some of the things people told me about my father’s efforts completely surprised me. I never saw him with them doing some of the things mentioned. The strange thing is, I was probably with him while he was doing some of the things they mentioned to me. Despite helping others, my father never lost his focus on helping me.
I can’t remember my Dad ever bragging about helping others. Don’t get me wrong, he would talk about the job itself and he would be quite proud of what he was able to accomplish. Whether it was a mission trip to help put roofs on houses in a poor country or cutting the neighbor’s grass.
He taught Sunday School and my Mom and he would put on plays with the youth in the church. He was proud of those things because they were gifts he learned and he used. But it was never like he expected to be repaid for his good deeds.
How do you find success? One day success hit me right in the face.
I got to see what real success was. It’s not a job. It’s not a goal you reach. It’s not what others think of you. It’s not how comfortable you live or if you have enough to have a great retirement. It’s not that new car or house.
No, success is finding something each and every day that you can leave that makes a good impression. My Dad wasn’t just a bread salesman. No, he made an impact on people’s lives because he was going to make sure everyone who crossed his path noticed his footprints.
When someone notices your footsteps, and wants to step into them himself, that is success. People don’t care about your failures. They are far more interested in how you have overcome them. It’s not whether your job involves picking up trash, it’s what you do with your life after a day of picking up trash.
As I now look back on my life, I no longer see failures, I see disappointing patches that lead to far greater things. There are many who couldn’t tell you the difference between a crescent wrench and a pipe wrench, much less how to use them. How much does it cost them to get a leaky faucet fixed?
Sitting around moping about a broken relationship, which I spent many a day doing, can only lead to depression. When I decided to not let failure consume me, a wonderful woman stepped into my life. How many people can say they wake up every day with the same wonderful spouse for sixteen years? Only the successful ones like me.
Do you know how many great people I have met on the various jobs I have had? One of the reasons I can relate to so many people today is not the “successes” I have had in my life, but for what I mistakenly thought were “failures.” Thank you Dad for teaching me that.
Prayer: Dear Mighty Father, Thank you for all those rough spots You placed in my life. Without them I would never be the person I am today. Amen.
