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My father was an exceptional high school athlete. He ran track, and played basketball and football. His experiences shaped him, and he used those same experiences to shape my two brothers and I. All of us would eventually play high school basketball, but only my youngest brother Jason played all the sports my father did.

Jason’s high school football team was terrible. They lost every game. But I learned an important lesson about life from watching a video of one of his games. In the fourth quarter of the last game of his senior year, they were losing again by an unspeakable margin. They pitched the ball to my brother. He dived to the python and scored a touchdown. Immediately, the entire team (on the field and on the sidelines) ran into the end zone and swamped Jason. They engaged in a riotous celebration. Even the coach joined in the romp.!

When I first saw the celebration, I thought it was the dumbest thing I had ever seen LOL. I couldn’t understand why they were celebrating. It was only one touchdown, and—-ummm, it wasn’t going to help them win the game. But Jason provided a crucial detail that put the celebration in context: it was the only touchdown they had scored the entire season. The celebration wasn’t about the game. The celebration was about the fact that they had achieved something.

That experience came to my mind as I reread an incident in the life of King Saul that is recorded 1 Samuel 14. We find Saul and his son Jonathan on a battlefield, and things aren't going so well. Their enemies have assembled a formidable army, but Saul’s has dwindled from 3000 to 600 men. He panics, and then announces a foolish policy. He forbids anyone in his army from eating until the battle is over and Israel has emerged victorious. Saul responded to his crisis the same way that many of us response to ours: by digging in: let’s work harder, eliminate distractions, and deny ourselves any enjoyment until the final battle is won. Unfortunately, that strategy didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work now.

By denying his army the opportunity to eat, it lead to their exhaustion and led them to engage in some unsavory behaviors when the battle was over. Conversely, the scripture informs us that

…Jonathan had not heard his father’s command, and he dipped the end of his stick into a piece of honeycomb and ate the honey. After he had eaten it, he felt refreshed.
1 Samuel 14:27

It was Jonathan who , in ignorance of the new policy, decided to eat an enjoyable meal and then launch a surprise attack that would eventually inspire the Israelite army to win. He won because he had been refreshed. He “ate the honey” and it gave him the strength that he needed to triumph. Honey is both nutritious and sweet, and it is often used in the scriptures as a metaphor for an enjoyable experience. So the lesson here is that enjoyment helps you win battles—and exhaustion may cause you to lose.

Question: why do you keep postponing the celebration to some imaginary future? We all make these foolish promises to ourselves that we will finally start enjoying ourselves when…

When I get out of debt

When I lose 20 pounds

When I find my soulmate

When the kids go to the college

When I retire...

And your “when” never happens, or life happens, so you wind up working but never enjoying!!

Instead, we have

money we we spend

clothes we don't wear

cars we don’t drive

vacations that we never go on

and friends that we don't call