I went to Principia College last weekend to watch Jenna, my daughter, swim in the Liberal Arts Swimming and Diving Championships. It was a large meet with 10 teams competing.

The Crafton Center where the meet was held on the Principia campus is an impressive facility, spacious, modern, and as nice as I’ve ever seen. It was a special joy to watch Jenna compete at the college level and in a sport she dearly loves. She did well.

While watching three hundred or so swimmers compete, I couldn’t help but notice that only a handful would place first. Deep in their heart, every swimmer would have loved to win their event, I imagine, but only a small percentage of the total competing ever would. It’s just the way events are set up. Only one swimmer or team can come in first. Everyone else follows in their trail, point-wise.

But does that mean all those in second or lower place are losers? I think not.

While rooting for a men’s relay team that soon was trailing seven others in the same heat, my heart sunk a bit at first, and then I remembered that winning is not measured in time. It’s measured in spiritual qualities demonstrated and gained.

For instance, say one is later married and the relationship gets tough and rocky. The individual who learned early in life not to give up easily, to dig in and work out one’s troubles, to have courage to face mountains and climb them, to persist and prevail, will not give up easily on that marriage and walk out the door early. They will hang in there and make it work. But to the individual whom all things come easily, and who hasn’t learned the lesson of not giving up under difficulty, they might cave easily and quit prematurely.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.” Absolutely! I agree! We should run every race with the intent to win the prize. But the prize Paul is writing about is not a temporal social or material type of recognition. It’s a spiritual reward, a heavenly prize that can never diminish in significance or tarnish over time. It’s the prize of increased spirituality lived and expressed. It’s the prize of improved character that makes us a better person. And we can gain this whether we stand on the world’s winner’s podium or not.

The general higher purpose of healthy sports competition is to prepare youngsters for life lessons. If students come out of a competitive event better people, then they gained, they won. They defeated some belief of lack in their life that they’ll never have to face again.

It’s fun to win gold medals, but it’s not necessary to gain as much as those who do.

Back to the relay I was watching…with my team trailing seven others…

I no longer saw swimmers lagging other swimmers—winners and losers. I saw children of God in every lane expressing an activity of life the best way they knew. Some of them were especially gifted in swimming talent. Others weren’t. But that didn’t matter anymore. The material outcome of who got to the finish line was a shortsighted view of the benefits coming from competing in that event. It was the spiritual outcome that was significant.

I watched closer at the trailing swimmers for qualities being expressed. I saw determination, conviction, hard work, courage, and unwillingness to be discouraged even though everyone else was ahead. I thought to myself, now those are qualities that are going to benefit those youngsters immensely in later years. They may not have won this race, but they are going to win the race of life. They are gaining qualities that enable them to succeed in other endeavors in years to come.

In later years, when the chips are down, when everything in the world seems against them, when everyone else seems to be succeeding and they aren’t, when the world is screaming out that they will fail, that they’re not good enough, that they can’t do it, they will not give up. They will keep on swimming. They will work harder, and they will keep on swimming until they get all the way to the finish line. Those kinds of people, my friends, are ones who succeed in life.

“I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Paul