Beyond the Gold!

I love the Olympic games, especially the Winter Games.  I have always been captivated by the alpine events and by figure skating.  Who can forget 1980’s Lake Placid Games  (if you were around then!) with Eric Heiden’s five Gold Medals and the incredible win of the U.S. Hockey Team against the Soviet Union?  “Do you believe in miracles?”  Of course we do!!   

This year, I have been especially impressed by the group of young men and women who are dazzling us with outrageous maneuvers on snowboards and skis in “slope-style” events and on the “half-pipe.” 

No matter the commercialism and shadow side of the Olympic Games – doping, corruption, etc – there is still something about them that captures an ideal I believe we all share.  It is the ideal of the peaceable Kingdom of God, when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares; and their spears into pruning hooks…” (Isaiah 2:4).   

Yes, as I watch the Olympic Games, I am looking beyond the gold.  I am looking for the realization of God’s hopes and dreams for all of us and for God’s creation.  It is an Olympic ideal!  May we all look for it, and more important, strive toward it as athletes straining for the prize (Philippians 3:14).