The gold medal
Canadian winters need great events to give us some much needed diversion. This year we have had the Olympics and our whole nation’s attention was indeed diverted toward this great event. The critics can complain and so they should. There’s great expense and as with all human endeavour, there’s some down side. But that said, the Olympics, in spite of the politics and in spite of the heartbreak of losing by a hundredth of a second, the Olympics are still a great thing. Anybody who says that they didn’t enjoy some part of the Olympics needs some therapy.
The Olympics are an open tribute to the achievements of mankind, both mentally and physically. It’s the ultimate expression of adulation for human effort. The Olympics make no apology for the fact that they showcase human effort and human effort alone. God simply isn’t part of the official Olympic mindset. In fact God, or the mere mention of God is so completely absent from all official aspects of the Olympics that it becomes almost conspicuous by it’s absence.
The only time that God was even mentioned was in the 14 times O’ Canada was sung, the occasions of the awarding of our 14 gold medals. An all time high for golds by the way.
And so it has become in Canada. We are a secular country and that’s the way most people want it to be. We as a country barely recognize God. It would be good if as a country, we recognized God and all He has done for us a bit more but the secularization of our democracy has pretty much erased that from the public scene. Except for the O’ Canada reference, God is pretty much on the sidelines.
But we shouldn’t be surprised. God made mankind in his own image with a free will. We all have a choice, we can acknowledge God or we can ignore Him. Many people “seem” to ignore God. The vast majority of people in Canada certainly ignore the church, be it Christian, Jewish or other.
As devoid of reference to God as the Olympics appear to be, I’m willing to wager that just about every athlete that competed was in prayer mode at some point in their Olympic competition. Whether it was while being in the air high over a ski slope or gasping for breath at the end of a cross-country ski run, I’m sure there were many prayers said. Perhaps by some who hadn’t prayed in a long time.
Recognizing God and praying to God is very personal thing. Just as we are made with a free will, we are not constrained by God to recognize Him, to love Him, to listen to Him or to obey Him. That’s our God-given individual freedom and choice.
A wise person will realize that they are born, they live and then they die. Life spans are obviously different in length. No one gets a choice about being born, few choose when to die. Both are sacred events or should be. What happens in between birth and death and how we use that time is affected by our choices and choices that are made for us. Some we can control, some we can’t. In Canada, we get to control a lot more choices than people do in some countries. Even within Canada , some people have very limited choices.
However, there’s one choice that every adult or young adult person has available. That choice is to serve God or not. Regardless of talent, physical abilities or disabilities, regardless of riches or lack thereof, each and every person has a choice. And we shouldn’t be surprised. God made us that way, with a free choice. The decision to be an Olympian may not be available to us.The decision to be rich or famous may not be available to us. But the decision to serve God, our maker, is available to us.
In that life event we can all have a gold medal.