A Message from your Leaders

August - The Olympic Games - Super Human Month

So it’s August 2008 – The Olympic Games are once again with us, and here we go again! Countless ‘super human’ sporting efforts will be channelled to us through the media from the greatest sporting show on earth.

One of the Olympic ‘credos’ is ‘higher, stronger, faster’ and over the next couple of weeks we’ll see performances from people all vying for the same thing – to do better than they’ve ever done before. They do it for themselves, for their families and for their countries….for the glory of sport! – great drama, great endeavour, great TV!

Without exception, every athlete in the Olympic Games has spent incredible amounts of their lives trying to achieve perfection. They are focussed on the ultimate outcome.

They’ve trained, and they’ve competed, reviewing their past performances to form a basis for their upcoming performances. They’ve sought advice from coaches as well as studying the theory, science, psychology and biology impacting on their particular discipline.

The success of the Olympian is not something that happens overnight. Many athletes have trained their entire lives for this one opportunity to shine on the world stage. None of these ‘super humans’ expects success without commitment, results without expenditure, or talent without effort. They all know that to get an outcome, they have to train, focus, work, learn, be taught and even to endure failure!

So, what has this possibly got to do with or faith lives, our call to mission, our relationships with each other, or our relationship with God?

If we recognise Olympians as ‘the best at what they do’, what can we learn from them in terms of our faith?