A Pyrrhic victory is one costing so much it is tantamount to defeat. In the third century BC, King Pyrrhus of Epirus lost so many men while defeating the Romans in battle he declared, “Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone.” A football team may win the game but lose its best players for the season due to injury. A workaholic husband may earn a raise only to see his family fall apart because of his neglect. Sometimes a win is truthfully a loss.
Football fans know that the final minutes of a game will either stimulate an exciting sense of tension or produce a feeling of absolute boredom, depending on whether the outcome is still in doubt. A team with the ball and the lead uses running plays to keep the clock moving and force their opponent to use all of their timeouts. Once the losing team cannot stop the clock, the winning team gets in a a victory formation. The quarterback simply kneels down.
Do you remember a time when telephones were so dumb your derriere could not place a call even if it tried? The act of ringing someone up was once an intensely personal experience. If you phoned a business, you would never be greeted by a robotic monotone offering you five menu items unrelated to your case. Instead, a real live person would always answer the call.
Dean was my closest childhood friend. We played basketball and tennis for hours. We would ride our bikes all over North Dallas, miraculously surviving without helmets or cell phones. We both wrote for the school paper, sang in the choir, and shared a weakness for the literal and satirical humor in the screwball comedy Airplane. Surely you must have seen the movie.
Most people know that the Golden Rule is the principle of treating others the way you wish to be treated. Jesus mentioned it in the gospels of Luke and Matthew. Sometimes described as an ethic of reciprocity, it can be found in virtually every religion and ethical tradition. It is a principle offering us a comprehensive grid by which we can evaluate our every action.
One day Jesus visited his hometown of Nazareth and read in the synagogue from a passage in Isaiah. Jesus sat down and said that these Scriptures had now been fulfilled, but stopped before He came to today’s verse, for it applies to His second coming rather than His first.
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