“So those who are last now will be first then, and those who are first will be last.”

I promise, this is my last Tour de France reference for this year.  It is over and as I write this Egan Bernal will win the 2019 Tour.  However, he never won a stage of this year’s Tour.  Had the 19th stage been completed, he probably would have won it, but because of the weather-forced cancellation of the stage, he did not get awarded a Stage win.  But, it doesn’t matter, he won the overall Tour classification and will hold the yellow jersey for a year and return next year wearing the number 1. How can you win, without winning?  This is part of what is great about the Tour de France.  It’s a race that happens over 21 Stages and it’s all about overall time so you don’t have to cross a finish line first, you just need to cross the final finish line in Paris with the lowest amount of time raced, overall.  That is how Bernal raced, but he still won.  There is a lesson in here for us as we go about our jobs.  I was talking last night to a Sales Vice President who was telling me about his best boss ever and how she became the President of the company without ever having been the top of any function in the business.  The owner saw how she had moved around the company over the years, learning, pacing her career and when time came to choose the next leader, she stood out because she’d worked all over the company, and even though she had never led any of those functions, she still was awarded the job. She won her career Tour de France without ever winning a stage. Yes, we can win without winning.

Jesus was clear for us that to be first, we must be last.  To serve others is to be in a higher order. In God’s Kingdom, now and to come, there is no winner, only those who subordinate and surrender themselves to Him. And what would our work be like if we adopted the same attitude?  What if we changed our definition of winning and instead focused more on how we can bring glory to God through what we do?  Yep, we can be whole in our soul without being worried about winning.

Reference:  Matthew 20:16 (New Living Translation)