No Gold Medals

A couple things came together for me last week with the close of the Winter Olympics: someone said something in passing about there not being any gold medals for visiting church members in the nursing home. No, I thought, nor are there any for preaching, leading worship, moderating a Session, or any of the hundred and one other things that pastors do on a daily basis.
I, for one, don’t want it any other way.
After all, most of the really important and worthwhile things that take place in life never make it into the public eye. You hug your kids when they go to bed at night. Nobody knows that unless you tell them, but you are doing something to shape their character and personality that is far more important than a gold medal.
The other thing that got me thinking along these lines was picking up a Temptations greatest hits CD. It opens with the classic “My Girl:”
I got sunshine on a cloudy day,
When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May...The vocals are great, especially David Ruffin’s lead, but the “hook” of the song is the guitar line that begins the cut and sets the mood and tempo. Responsible for that, and for much of the rest of the Motown Sound, were a group of studio musicians who worked seven-day weeks for $10 a song, and who received no credit for their work until recently. They were known collectively, and informally, as the Funk Brothers. My guess is that you’ve heard of the Temptations, the Miracles, the Supremes, and Stevie Wonder, but you’ve probably never heard of the Funk Brothers, yet without them there would have been no Motown. (If your taste runs more to mainstream rock-’n’-roll, you might like to know that it’s not one of the Beach Boys who opens up the song “California Girls;” it’s the largely unsung bassist Carol Kaye—and you’ve probably never heard of her, either, though she’s appeared on more than 10,000 recordings, according to her web site, http://www.carolkaye.com/)
Jesus said, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:43b-45 TNIV) See—it’s not too bad working in the background.