Good morning,
I'm the Rev'd Steven Page for St Patrick's Anglican Church. This
month, our devotional thoughts are inspired by notable moments in the
world of sports. In honour of the Olympics in London, let's talk
about some of the past Olympics.
The first time
the Olympic Games came to Canada was 1976, when the Summer Games were
played in Montreal. And one of the most memorable athletic
accomplishments at those games was the performance of Romanian
gymnast Nadia Comaneci. On July 18, 1976, Nadia scored a perfect 10.0
in the uneven bars gymnastics event. It was the first time in
Olympics history that a gymnast had made a perfect score. In fact,
the scoreboards were not built to handle a perfect score. So they
displayed it as a blinking 1.00. Young Nadia, who was only 14 years
old, actually made another 6 perfect scores during those Olympic
Games. She won the gold medal in the Uneven Bars, the Balance Beam,
and the All-Around gymnastics events.
Well, that
year, a 7-yr-old girl in Fairmont, West Virginia, was watching the
Olympics on TV. She was so inspired by Nadia's performance that she
took up gymnastics. She had a natural talent, and got some good
coaching, and before you knew it, in 1984, Mary Lou Retton stood at
the ready at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Several
Soviet-bloc countries boycotted the Games in LA, but Romania sent a
team. And Retton's main rival for a medal was the Romanian Ecaterina
Szabo. And in the individual All-Around competition, Szabo led Retton
by 15-one-hundredths of a point with two events to go.
But on the
Floor Exercises portion, Mary Lou Retton scored a perfect 10.0, like
her childhood hero Nadia a few years earlier. That closed the gap
between her and Szabo. Then on her final event, the Vault, Retton
raced down the floor, jumped, bounced high off the springboard, spun
and turned in the air, and landed without the least little slip.
Everyone held their breath... The judges gave her another perfect
score, 10.0, and the Los Angeles crowd went wild with joy! Retton won
gold, pulling ahead of Szabo by 5 one-hundredths.
Her two perfect
scores helped her win Gold. She copied the amazing accomplishment of
Nadia Comaneci, the gold medalist she had watched and admired eight
years earlier.
You know, the
Bible invites us to copy our Lord God. Eph 5 says, “be imitators of
God, ... and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave
himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
(NIV84). Or in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets the bar for us
quite high, calling us to “be perfect... as your heavenly Father is
perfect.” (Mt 5:48)When he says this, Jesus is echoing the words of
God in the Old Testament, when God challenges his people to look like
him in how they live. God says, “Be holy because I, the Lord your
God, am holy.” (Lev 19.1)
If that sounds
intimidating, to copy and imitate the perfect holiness of God,
remember this: 1st, often something is lost in making a copy, they
are rarely as sharp as the original. You can usually tell when you
are holding a photocopy, because they are more streaky or spotty or
fuzzy than the original document. Our efforts to copy and imitate
God's perfect holiness might be a bit imperfect.
But the 2nd
thing to remember is that God is more pleased by our desire and our
attempts to imitate Christ than by how close we come. That frees us
to do our best for God, to love and serve with all our hearts, all
our strength. Then trust that God receives our feeble efforts.
Through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, God will more and more
sharpen and clear up our fuzzy copies. As we grow in faith and
maturity, our God-imitations will look more and more like our
Heavenly Father. And when the day comes that we stand before our
judge on God's throne, God will look over to Jesus, who will hold up
a 10.0 saying, yes, this one is a perfect imitator of me. For St
Patrick's church, I'm Steven Page
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