There was a certain sports show my family used to watch together back in the 70’s. I thought the show opened with the words, “…the thrill of victory and the humiliation of defeat.” But, a quick Google search told me I was wrong, it was the agony of defeat, not the humiliation of defeat. But for me personally, the humiliation of defeat is much more fitting.
I was born smack dab in the middle of two athletic brothers. I tried and failed at everything that came so easily to them. I’ve knocked out teeth, been stitched up and split my head open more times than I can count. If I ever go bald, a patchwork of stitch-marks and odd bumps will tell the story of a whole lot of humiliating defeats. Still, in spite of my older brother telling me that I “had to be the most uncoordinated person on the face of the planet,” I never gave up—determined to experience my own “thrill of victory.”
When we were little we belonged to a swim club. There were three diving boards: high, medium, and low. Almost from the first day we joined, my brothers were diving off the high dive. They progressed on to all sorts of impressive, daring dives…worthy of any diving team.
It wasn’t until the end of that first summer that I mustered up the courage to take the ultimate challenge; dive off the high dive. I climbed the steps to the top, walked carefully to the end of the board and froze, paralyzed with fear. Kids in line behind me started to get impatient, “Come on! Hurry up! Jump already!”
My brothers felt sorry for me. “You don’t have to dive, Laurie. Just jump. It’s easy.”
But I didn’t want to just jump, I wanted to prove to my brothers and others that I could dive off of it—just like them. I took a deep breath and stepped off the board. Unfortunately, mid-air I decided to turn my jump into a dive. What it turned into was a half dive, half belly-smacker. Honestly, my first thought was that I’d somehow managed to hit the cement. How could entering mere water hurt that bad? My brothers were bent over laughing. It was a tricky dive alright, and it was all I could do to keep from crying.
The medium board offered the most bounce and was used the most. My younger brother did a dive where he would stand at the end of the board, and with his back facing the water, he would bounce up high in the air and enter the water cleanly in front of the board. I told him I wanted to try it and he was more than willing to coach me, “Just jump up high, push off with your toes and dive forward.”
It sounded easy enough. I walked to the end of the board, turned around, my heels slightly off the board, got a good bounce and dove…right into the diving board. Humiliatingly enough, my body stayed on the board. I didn’t want the pitying attention I was drawing. I didn’t even pick my head up; I just did a slow roll off the board, plopped into the water, and swam nonchalantly over to the ladder. Move on friends, nothing to see here.
My brother was genuinely concerned, “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Of course! It barely hurt at all,” I lied. Just another humiliating defeat.
Sadly, I never did feel the “thrill of victory.” Not in anything that required a modicum of coordination, anyway.
But the only victory that really matters was won for me. Over 2000 years ago, Jesus came into this world in the most humble, vulnerable form of all—a precious, little baby. Jesus allowed Himself to be mutilated, tortured and killed for a world full of sinners like me, but death could not keep Him, and eventually it won’t keep us either.
“In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, the trump will sound, the dead will rise and and our dying bodies will be transformed into bodies that will never die, and in this prophecy will be fulfilled: Death will be swallowed up in victory.” (1 Corinthians 15:52-55, paraphrased by me).
