I'm one of those people who roots for the underdog.
Which is one of the reasons why I was rooting for Sideways at the Academy Awards. Heck, I knew it had a snowball's chance in you know where of winning. Anyone who had a brain bigger than the size of a pea knew that either Million Dollar Baby or The Aviator was going to win the big prize of best picture. I have to confess I didn't see either of those movies. I did see Sideways, and I believe that it deserved to win.
And when the winner, Million Dollar Baby, was announced, I turned off the T.V. and realized that a lot of times, the underdog doesn't win. It really doesn't. The small guy usually has no chance of being on top at the end. That's what makes us like movies like Hoosiers - a true story of a little high school basketball team who won the state championship in Indiana.
I'm trying to be the small guy. The underdog. The one who seems to be last, but according to Jesus, will be first.
There's a book I love. It's a novel by a man named Reed Arvin, who was a close friend of Rich Mullins and who produced several of his albums. It's called A Wind In The Wheat. It's a story about a musician with an amazing gift from Rose Hill, Kansas. He uses his gift at a small church, as well as a convalescent hospital. Until he's discovered by a music producer from Nashville. Then his life takes a completely different turn and he makes a CD and becomes famous and gets signed by Atlantic Records and becomes this huge Christian and secular artist. I don't want to ruin the book for you, but he eventually bottoms out and realizes that he isn't called to be that big guy. He's called to be the little guy. At one point in the book, he talks to his manager, the guy who found him in the first place, and he talks about who he's thinking about the chair stackers in his church back in Rose Hill, and how these same guys would stack the chairs week after week, never getting any recognition, but yet serving in the small things. Basically, the underdogs. While you have the big dogs preaching and leading and being upfront and whatnot, every church needs the servants in the church, the ones who do the behind the scenes stuff, the ones who get no recognition.
I want to be one of those people. As a worship leader, and one who is recognized as being pretty successful, whatever that means, I'm beginning to realize more and more that I want to be the underdog. I want to be the one who's stacking chairs and who's behind the scenes and who is doing what Jesus has called us to do - to be the ones who serve - not for attention, not for fame or fortune or recognition or popularity, but who simply serve.
Sideways won pretty much every Spirit award possible. The Spirit awards are the Independent film awards that are given out the night before the Academy Awards. I have watched the Spirit awards ever since Memento picked up everything a few years ago from the Spirit Awards. The Spirit Awards are essentially the Underdog Awards.
My prayer is that when I exit this life and enter the next life, I will be awarded the Spirit Award, the underdog award - and not the Academy Award.
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