These athletes, many of whom are basically kids, gave their all and didn't quite cut it. It has to be devastating. Then, mere moments after having their dreams slip through their hands a reporter will stick a microphone and a camera in their face, making sure they know that most of the word is watching them at their lowest moment, and say something to the effect of you've worked harder than most people, trained every day for hours a day, sacrificed dates and vacations and the normal activities of people your age, strictly kept to a diet that doesn't taste as good as junk food and basically gave up having a life and a childhood in hopes of winning a medal here at [insert name of nation hosting Olympic games that year], only to have this happen, to fall, to make a mistake, to get beaten. How does that make you feel?
You were the favorite for the gold but that other runner left their lane and bumped you and you lost. How does that feel?
You've performed that routine in many world competitions and never got less than a 9.987 with it, but when it really mattered you lost your balance and fell off the beam? To what one hundredth of a degree does life suck for you right at this moment?
OK, maybe they wouldn't say it like that last one, but isn't that basically what they are asking? And there is the hurting and broken person trying to hold it together and look gracious in defeat in front of the world. How does it make them feel? Are you a robot...no, are you an idiot robot? How do you think it makes them feel? It makes me want someone to slap the journalist hard enough to make their teeth rattle, and say you just got slapped HARD on worldwide TV, you can't cry without looking weak and you can't retaliate without looking like a sore losing poor sport about bad fortune and mistreatment, and a good portion of the viewers celebrated your pain because you're not from their homeland and some even laughed. How does that make you feel? I know that's not very Christ-like, but that is how those situations make me feel. I don't usually even want friends asking me in relative privacy how it feels when I fail to get a job I try for, when it seems to me that I didn't preach as well as I can, or when I somehow fall short or get robbed in a situation that matters to me. I want to get alone with God and deal with that pain and failure, and I don't put the kind of time and energy that Olympic athletes do into much of anything, at least not anything of this realm.
But my train of thought here is taking me down the track of the sacrifice for the chance for the gold these athletes make rather than what it feels like to be vulnerable and have the fire of pain stoked moments after loss in front of the world. They have been given talent, skills and ability that are above average in the areas of their sport. OK, they're above really really good. The hand of God, a generous combination genetics, mixed with the drive and desire, the opportunity, and yes, training, discipline and sacrifice to produce the world class competitor. The fastest runner in the world may have been born with what he needs to be able to achieve that title, but no one ever knows, not even him, if he doesn't train. Carl Lewis didn't party all night and sleep all day and then show up somewhere once every four years and blow records in track away. No Olympic athlete does that. Even the ones who know that they will not win the gold but simply dream to do better than they ever have and represent their country by competing (hey,, the person in last place at any Olympic events is still heads above most of the world) don't do that. They train. Hard. Daily. They push themselves above and beyond what it feels that they can do or endure. They do the same steps, routines, activities over and over and over again until they can do them without thinking, until they become reflexive and second nature (and just writing that sounded boring, so I imagine it's kind of boring to do it). They discipline themselves and get others to help advise them and help hold them accountable to the regimen and commitment they have made. They hire coaches that instruct them on ways to train and how to get that extra fraction of a second or a point, and are constantly striving to do better than they did the day before. They control exactly what and how much of it they put in the body and what they do for recreation. Seriously, how bad would it be to qualify for the Olympics in track and twist a knee rollerblading a week before leaving for the games?
It's not that there's anything wrong with pizza and rollerblading, but why take the chance? The dream, the goal is more important to them than the immediate comfort and mundane pleasure that people often live for. So, even after they fall short, they feel the sacrifice worth it just to have been able to compete..or so they say before they go find someplace alone to cry and perhaps scream their pain and frustration into a pillow. But it must be at least somewhat true, because most of them don't stop. They go right back to the training, the discipline and hope to return in four years to try again. Those are people born with an edge, that have something the rest of us don't have, in whatever sport they have been called to. They train and live disciplined lives.
Grace is what enables us to do spiritually what these athletes with a dream do in their lives. Grace is not the ability or freedom to sin and still perform any more than inborn talent is the ability to skip training and win the gold. Grace gives us the ability to see that the goal of performing for the glory of the Kingdom is more important than the mundane comfort and pleasures of this life. Grace gives us the ability to control ourselves and discipline ourselves and sacrifice in order to progress toward a perfection that others can see and be drawn to and inspired by. Whatever we have to let go of, put off or turn down in order to achieve the purpose of God in our lives that we have been called to, to do as well as we can with the gifts and talents that we have been given, is worth it. The sacrifice is never in vain, because grace guarantees that if will make our lives a living sacrifice and give ourselves to God, He will complete the work and use us for His glory.
There is a call to lay down our lives, and that includes comfort and pleasure at times. Sometimes even comforts and pleasures that are not in and of themselves wrong. But to have victory in the race we are running is worth what it takes, whatever that is. It might be staying up an hour late to spend some alone time with Daddy. Or maybe it's getting up an hour early to pray and meditate. Or maybe it's something totally different. But we all have some things that our spirit responds to that we can do to deepen our time and relationship with God as well as make our light shine a little brighter for the world to see. Whatever that is, grace is what enables us to do it. And whatever sacrifice is made, right up to our very life, will seem like nothing compared to the crown and hearing Daddy say, "Well, done My good and faithful servant."
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.
- I Corinthians 9:24-27
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