BAM!

Introduction

Sometimes, in efforts to express the enormity of our excitement during pivotal points of great joy, we often have to employ the usage of exclamations to exaggerate the epitome of our success amid the expectation of a much-anticipated defeat. For example, my father was a card player who was able, through progressive thinking and prolific timing, to celebrate great victories with a hand of cards that, for most anyone else, would have led to a predictable defeat. Daddy, with a faulty hand of cards, would still bid, with absolute confidence, much higher than he often should have. Even the most optimistic individuals at the table with him would doubt his ability to win against such great odds. These significant odds only deepened daddy’s desire to prove his doubter wrong. Once daddy realized, despite his losing hand of cards, that he was in line to win the game with his final play, he would not just routinely or quietly lay his cards on the table (Oh, no! That would be too serene for my daddy); he would stand up at the table and rear back with card in hand as far as he could physically bend and, with all the force that he could muster up, daddy would cast his winning card to the table and shout with a triumphant voice of victory, “BAM”.  

BAM is an acronym for be a miracle. In essence it would have to be a miraculous act in itself for my daddy to claim sweet victory while standing so closely to the margins of defeat in his card game (of which he was behind, dealt a below average hand, and doomed presumably for failure). Daddy, therefore, in celebrating his miraculous achievement (of making a comeback from a setback), with a glare of confidence, would directly look into the eyes of his opponents, who were obviously overwhelmed by his sudden triumph against such significant odds, and loudly say as an exclamation point, BAM (this has got to be a miracle because victory is mine)! I remember sitting on the floor in the hallway peeking around corners while listening intensely to daddy as he played cards for hours on end, which was a forbidden practice according to grandmother who was the Sunday school teacher in a traditional and conservative Baptist Church. I was not allowed to play cards in grandmother’s house nor in grandmother’s presence. Therefore, this illustration stood out in my memory so clearly simply because my curiosity about the card game and its participants captured my utmost attention. I concluded at an early age that I would follow the example of my father. I would do this not by being a champion at cards, but by being brave enough to take a few risks rather than live my life afraid to reach for victory because of my real fear of failure or the reaction of my friends, foes, and other faces of ridicule if I so happened to suffer defeat.

Daddy was such a great card player because of his willingness to take risks even when the odds of a successful outcome significantly outweighed his advantage of winning. I learned from watching daddy that winning is not always decided by the hand or the cards that we have been dealt in life. Success has to first be visualized before victory can ever be validated. In other words, confidence in partnership with competence can be a most effective tool towards both winning championships and faring well despite the various challenges in life.

No one can accurately, authentically, or with absolute certainty capture with mere words, regardless of how articulate he or she is, the thrill of success and victory or the agonizing pain of failure and defeat. Life is so full of challenges that every individual can expect to experience his or her share of both the greatness of success and the grief of failure. In life, if we are able to learn the lessons from our areas of liability, weakness and pain, we will later be able to look back in retrospect and laugh at those very same obstacles that caused us to lament. Can it be true, as stated by sacred Scripture, that all things work together for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28)? Is it possible that the perils and pains experienced in life are simply instruments used by God to instruct us about His power, instigate us into His glorious presence and increase our intellect about His unfailing ability to supply our every need in accordance to the purpose and plan that He has for His People?

Have you ever experienced success in an area where you had earlier experienced failure? Could it be true that the exact things in life that caused you to fumble the football of success, finish last in the achievement files, and feel like a complete failure according to worldly statistics, later on in life contributed equally to your success, joy, or your first place finish?

If our focus is not always on finishing first, but rather, always on endeavoring to endure until the end, perhaps we can stop falsely labeling and linking failure to end of the road words like “final” and “finished”. If our trust is truly upon Him, who is able to prevent us from falling, then failure, to us, is not only non-existent, but also never even an option. Many times what we fail to realize in life is that God will often use the malignancy of a health crisis or the misfortunes of hardship experienced by individuals as material for a miracle. In essence, the mishap, misery and the mourning that we sometime find ourselves going through could very well be the making of a much-needed miracle.

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