What does it mean to succeed?  Does it mean getting to a place, a point, where you’ve accomplished all you have to do?  Does it mean achieving a lifestyle, full with possessions, money, admiration, which allows you to feel comfortable?  While we may aspire to these things, success isn’t an individual achievement; it reflects a community because it really is about human flourishing.  I think to consider a life successful means it’s connected in a web of relationships with others which are mutually beneficial and collaborative.  I think it means an approach to life which recognizes the complex nature we all have and is willing to try and understand rather than define. I think it means we approach what we do and how we do it with humility, passion, and thoughtfulness.

Models of success are most commonly driven by two competing perspectives: insecurity and conviction.  Insecurity focuses on something we lack and obsesses over the idea that if we could only obtain what we lack then we can live happily ever after.  Conviction comes from a sense of purpose which claims our strengths and weaknesses, and harnesses them to strive towards a vision.  Conviction is about identity, and Jesus consistently tells us stories, heals our wounds, feeds our body and soul, to provide us with an identity and a conviction that the kingdom of God has come near to you, and to your neighbor.

Success isn’t being free of struggle, difficulty, or conflict; success is about a character we form in the midst of struggle, difficulty, and conflict.  Being children of God empowers us to enter the messy world and proclaim a conviction, a vision, a set of values, which comes from knowing whom and whose we are.  Christianity doesn’t remove us from the messy world; it sends us deep within it.

May this week be a time for you to try again with a new perspective, to claim a life of purpose you hear from the stories of scripture, rehearse in the prayers you utter, and claim in the body and blood of Jesus you consume.  Success, whatever it means on any given day, is found in life together and from the strength within us when we remember.

–Thomas