I love the Olympic Games...and in spite of all the hype, the over-commercialization, and the incessant chatter from the media's talking-heads...I think it's still one of sports greatest spectacles.
I love the great stories of victory and triumph...like the incredible story of Michael Phelps. Behind all of those stories are even bigger stories of years, if not lifetimes, of training and sacrificing for a goal greater than the athlete themselves. It's simply an inspirational time that rolls around every four years.
But I'll have to tell you that every four years, where I truly find the most inspirational and compelling stories, are from the athletes who came away without reaching their ultimate goal. There's just something truly inspirational about gritty perseverance in the face of bitter defeat or disappointment. Even sitting here typing this, I can see on the TV screen in my mind the images of athletes from past Olympic games who had to deal with...as the late, great, Jim McCay used to say on Wide World of Sports...the agony of defeat.
As emotionally moving and proud those stories of great victory are, there's so much more to learn and so much to be taught from those stories of athletes who came up just short of their dream...for it is in those stories where most of us find ourselves and where we best relate.
My first memorable story from this Olympic games came earlier this week while watching the women's gymnastics team finals. Team USA gymnast Alicia Sacramone has trained for the better part of her young life for the very moment she found herself in last night. Unfortunately for her and the USA team, she made a couple of technical errors during her performances the other night that proved to be disastrous to the USA team’s chances of winning the gold medal. That honor went instead to the Chinese team.
Aside from all the obvious things you think about at times like that...like that you just feel horrible for the poor girl, being right out there in front of the entire world...there was one thought that stuck with me and that I woke up the next morning contemplating on. I was struck by the obvious level of disappointment from Alicia Sacramone and the rest of the US gymnastics team...at winning the silver medal.
Yeah, it seemingly almost got lost that this team of extremely talented gymnasts won a silver medal at the Olympic games! Here you have a handful of young women who are at the top of their chosen sport among the literally millions of teenagers and children around the world who would give almost anything to be where they are at right now. Yet at that moment, there was almost a tangible feeling that this group had underachieved.
And therein lies my first lesson that I take away from these Olympic games – that our true measure of success is not just in what we achieve, but; in what we could have achieved. This group of young athletes obviously felt like they were capable of performing much better than they did, and; although they came away with a silver medal…no small accomplishment to say the least…there level of expectation for themselves was set at a gold medal level.
The same is true in our daily walk with Christ. It goes without saying that with the unconditional love and grace that God lavishes on us, comes a humbling responsibility to pass on that same unconditional love and grace to everyone else we come into contact with. After all, that is the essence of the Christian life, loving God by loving others. My question that I’m posing to myself today is this - am I doing that to the very best of the ability that God has given me? Am I using all of the gifts and abilities to serve, love and touch others that God has placed within me?
Oh it’s easy enough for me to start listing off the “things” I do each day in the area of Christian service. I can even make myself feel pretty “holy” about what I do if I just give it a try. I mean, come on, I teach in the student ministry, I work with Awanas in the children’s ministry, and I serve on several teams and committees in the church. Oh yeah, don’t let me forget about Love Granbury and Healthy Kids, Operation School Supplies and Christmas for Children. Nice list I might think to myself.
But here’s the question – how am I actually doing in my Christian walk in comparison with how I could be doing? Ouch!! Am I living up completely to the potential that God has placed within me for the furtherance of His Kingdom? How about you? As Dr. Phil always asks…”how’s that working out for ya?”
Here are a couple of good self-check questions that we can ask ourselves, and they both tie right back into our Olympics story:
First, the obvious question - are you in the game? Are you serving others in the name of Christ to the honor and glory of God? Those young gymnasts in Beijing are gymnasts not simply because they woke up one day and decided to call themselves gymnasts. No, they are gymnasts because they have each made the intentional and deliberate commitment to a way of life that has made them an elite athlete. They have trained, sacrificed, and studied and made gymnastics their priority for years to rise to this occasion.
Likewise, do we simply call ourselves Christians, or do we exercise and practice the daily spiritual disciplines necessary for the Christian life? As sure as thunder follows lightning, spiritual works of service follow a commitment to Christ and His Kingdom. That’s exactly what James is talking about when he wrote that faith, without works, is dead (James 2:14-26). Just as those awe inspiring routines on the balance beams, vaults, parallel bars and floor exercises indicate those young ladies status as a “gymnast”, so our acts of self-sacrifice and humble service indicate the true status of our heart’s relationship to Christ.
Second, here’s a not so obvious question…if we’re in the game…if we’re deliberately and intentionally serving others in the name of Christ, do we sweat the small stuff? Do we pay close attention to the things that, in the grand scheme of things, seem small and insignificant? This is huge! My pastor, Mark Forrest has a somewhat rhetorical question that he asks during a lot of his sermons, and I love the question because it serves as a checkpoint for me (and because I love baseball). The question he asks is this – do we focus so much on the grandeur and drama of the grand slam home run that we forget about the importance of the routine ground balls? I must confess that often times I do…both in the areas of personal devotion and service.
In my personal devotion, I sometimes get so caught up in the “home runs” of the big service projects…like Love Granbury or Healthy Kids…that I tend to neglect the spiritual disciplines that are absolutely critical to my spiritual health. Things like daily Bible study, prayer, quiet time and worship. Just as those highly trained gymnasts follow a strict physical training regimen of which proper nutrition is a major component, our spiritual lives must have that same regimen of spiritual disciplines in order to be at our peak performance for Kingdom activities.
In athletics, neglecting the small stuff can be devastating. For example, did you happen to notice the margin in scoring between each of the medal winners and then between the three teams that won medals and those that didn’t in the team gymnastics competition? There was a razor thin margin between each of the medal winners and between the medal winners and the rest of the field who didn’t medal. In most instances it literally came down to tenths and hundredths of single points! In the world that is gymnastics scoring, that equates to a single slight step on a single landing, or a single foot being out of bounds on a single floor exercise, or even a teeny-tiny wobble on the balance beam. So believe me, these gymnasts know that the little stuff matters.
It is no different in the area of Christian service for us. We may be out there doing all the right things…serving and being the hands and feet of Christ…but if we neglect the seemingly small and insignificant, moment-by-moment opportunities to serve, we will simply not be as effective in sharing Christ’s Kingdom as we should be. So the next time we have an opportunity to open the door for a total stranger and let them go first, or to help someone to their car with their packages at Walmart, or just offer a kind word to someone who seems to not be having a good day, we need to recognize those times as the holy moments that they are…moments to plant a seed of love and kindness in a heart that desperately needs the love of Christ. So as Pastor Mark says, “focus on doing the simple, everyday, routine stuff well.”
Finally, as Christians we are often times very prone to evaluating our spiritual walk by comparing ourselves to other people around us. As long as we aren’t as “bad” as the person we are comparing ourselves to, or as long as we appear to be “doing” more than the other person, we tend to feel pretty good about ourselves. As evidenced by the US Women’s Gymnastics team the other night, the fact that they won the silver medal was little consolation for the knowledge that they didn’t perform up to their full potential. I didn’t see any of them jumping around going, “hey, aren’t we great because we won the silver medal and this other team over here only won the bronze medal.” No, those comparisons were nowhere to be found the other night.
So remember, it’s not what we are doing for Christ that really counts, but what we are doing, measured against what we are capable of doing for Christ. In the final analysis, we all have a gold medal standard to strive for.
I'm Micky Shearon, and that's Life on The Way.
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