Sports are a metaphor for life:
- The curler has vision. The champions are thinking three to four moves ahead. And so it is with life.
- The cross-country skier has the uphill. He or she races to the top. The breathing becomes labored. The heart pounds as the muscles cry out for oxygen. The thighs burn. The champions beat the hill. To others the hill wins. In life, we can overcome or be overcome by the hills we face.
- Hockey is about teamwork. An assist is just as important as scoring a goal.
- The snowboarders on the half-pipe know that by taking a risk there is a pretty good chance they will land on their butt. They also know that risk is the only way they have a chance at winning a medal.
- The bobsledders and the lugers know that that a fast time only happens with a series of good decisions with no errors in judgment. Character and trust are like that too: they take a while to build and can be eliminated with one simple mistake.
- The outcome in figure skating is objective and not subjective. In speed skating, the skater with the fastest time wins. The clock is observable. It is always fair. In figure skating, the results are subjective to the opinion of the judges. The outcome isn’t always fair. Sometimes life is objective. The third graders taking a spelling test is an example of this. But, life is usually subjective and therefore imperfect because the people we are in relationships with are imperfect.
Vision, challenges, teamwork, risk, integrity – this is the stuff life is made of. Sometimes life is fair. We get what we deserve. Sometimes life isn’t so fair. We get less or we get more than we deserve. God gives us a vision for our lives. He helps us overcome challenges. He provides others for us to do life with. He picks us up when we fall and celebrates with us when we succeed. He leads us on a path of integrity. And, God gives us grace – we get more than we deserve from a benevolent God who created us, sustains us, and will save us.
The best is yet to come…
Craig
4 comments:
Craig,
thought you might enjoy my piece from the back of the bulletin for this week - Olympics stuff: - Kelly Karges
Journeys
2-28-10
The Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver remind us that even in our personalized digital age, there can still be simultaneous live shared experiences (at least with everybody in our time zone). The other night, the women figure skaters were performing on the ice and there was this instant recognizable shared experience.
We had been told that one skater’s mother had died un-expectantly on Sunday. And the young woman had chosen to go ahead and compete, knowing that her mother would have wanted it that way. She skated her routine flawlessly then broke down crying the instant it was over. You could tell that she didn’t want to share this emotional moment with the world, but there was no going back once the grief began to escape from her face in liquid form. From there the camera panned up to the audience where there was a man standing alone clapping. His face personified loss, love and pride. They were eyes that had emptied themselves of all tears. It was a face that was obviously completely emotionally spent; there was no more sadness that could be expressed. But you could also tell he was so proud. He had the look of a man who was incomplete, yet deeply satisfied. The emotion these images evoked from the announcers and those of us who watched it was pure and raw.
Simultaneously across the globe, anybody who had ever lost a loved one was crying. We all shared the experience of having to go ahead with life despite our grief. We all knew what it was to be so overcome with emotion that we were completely sad and totally happy at the same time. Life just does that to us sometimes.
At that moment, I think most of us criers were simply thankful that we could share a small piece of our raw core emotion/soul with that daughter and dad on the T.V. screen in front of us. All of us were just honoring our lost loved ones with some tears, individually, and at the same time. It was a sacred moment.
Grace & Peace,
Kelly -
That was beautiful and insightful. Thanks for sharing. We watched an interview with her tonight. She is an incredible young woman.
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