Winning Gold

There's a lot on my mind.

Olympics . . .
A commissioning service . . .
And faith.  Authentic faith.  Gritty, real faith that takes the love of God seriously.

I have spent the past two weeks watching all kinds of people bike, swim, run, jump, dive, leap, flip, throw, row, paddle, or fight their way to glory.  How many hours have they dedicated to honing their skills for that micro-chance at Olympic glory?  Some of them train for thousands of hours to lose by a hundredth of a second.

And all for a wreath that fades.

Canada won a single gold medal.  I watched the girl win it.  You'd think I'd be able to remember her name.  But I couldn't.  Mere days after it happened, and already I'd forgotten.  What will happen in the weeks and months and years that follow?  What will happen in Rio, when someone who is a fraction of a second faster, who sticks the landing just a little tighter, who splashes a drop of water less, snatches the glory and claims it for him or herself?  Even Usain Bolt's glory will fade.

The Olympics brings out the best in us.  For two weeks, all countries live and work under a single flag with a single anthem.  There is beauty in watching someone do what they do really well.  There are lots of great stories, stories of courage and dignity, of perseverance and grace.  I love the Olympics.    But just as they bring out our best, they bring out our worst.  The single flag doesn't erase ugly rivalries.  There are accusations of cheating and conspiracy.  There was a lot of posturing at the Olympics.  A lot of steely stares, a lot of muscle-flexing and pointing fingers and kissing to the crowds.  Much as the Greeks imagined their gods doing, I'm sure.

And while the Greek gods posture and gloat, while the athletes sweat and strain muscles and bones to the point of breaking (and past), we sit in our armchairs and look on and cheer. We look down at our flabby selves and imagine ourselves honed and chiseled and standing on a podium with a medal around our necks.  But that's as far as it goes.  Because we all know that Olympic gold is for the elite.  The wreath that fades is for a select few.  It's not for paunchy, middle-aged couch potatoes with illusions of grandeur.

This morning, I attended a commissioning service for a family that is leaving behind all that is familiar to move to Togo, West Africa, to build a hospital.  It was a beautiful service.  This family is well-loved, and will be dearly missed by their own families and friends alike.  We all know they go with God.  They have spent months in a whirlwind preparation, but really, when I look at them, God has been preparing them for years.  Today, their church family and their blood families gathered around them and sent them, with their blessings, to do the work of God.  I am honoured to have been part of it.  (You can follow their story at www.notafrica.blogspot.com.)

I thought, as I was driving home, how wild and crazy it all is.  I mean, think about it . . . packing up a home and a business, leaving behind family that loves you beyond measure, and heading off to a developing country with five kids in tow . . . for what?  There's not even a medal involved.  No one is going to sing their national anthem.  No one is going to raise their flag.  There's no glory.  Just a whole lot of guts. I had the same reactions from people when I made my own journey across the ocean to spend an extended period of time in a developing country.  I was suddenly a "super-hero" Christian, one of the extra-spiritual ones who actually does crazy things for God.  We like to watch and clap and cheer and admire them, and tell other people that we know them, but perish the thought that we do it ourselves.  Kind of like the Olympic athletes.  We love watching them do their thing as we breathe a sigh of relief that we don't have to go to all that hard work, and we reach for another handful of potato chips.

Except that this family is not made up of spiritual Olympic heros.  They're an ordinary family with ordinary jobs and ordinary kids who love and follow an extraordinary God.  Just like I was.  No super-hero faith there, let me tell you, just a whole lot of fear and a conviction that it was where God was calling me.  And that means that anyone who takes their faith in any way seriously is fair game.  If God can call me, if he can call my friends to Togo, he can call anyone.  Maybe, just maybe, he does call everyone to take big risks, make big sacrifices, and step way out of our comfort zones, but we are too busy being spiritually flabby and lazy to be obedient.  Maybe, if we took our faith seriously, we'd all live radically.  Maybe radical would become normal.  Maybe we'd stop looking at ordinary people who follow an extraordinary God as super-spiritual Olympic athletes and start seeing them as, well, ordinary people who follow an extraordinary God.  Maybe we'd stop thinking about living out of authentic faith as a spectator sport, and all join in the game.

We'd win a wreath that never fades. A crown that is laid up for us.

We'd stand for a single Kingdom.

We'd live under a single flag.

We'd sing a single anthem. 
I think it would go something like this:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,

Who was, and is, and is to come.

Worthy are you, O Lord, our God

To receive glory and honour and power,

For you created all things,

And by your will they were created and have their being.

And the only posturing we'll do is to take the crowns from our heads, and throw them before His throne, and he'll get the glory.

That's an opening ceremony I don't want to miss.

Now I've got to go . . . I'm in training.