U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn is a picture of exhilaration and exhaustion at the end of her gold-medal winning downhill run in Vancouver.
I’ve seen interesting responses so far by athletes depending on how things went for them in the last week and a half. First, you have Lindsey Vonn, who at the end of the downhill competition, knowing she’d scored a Gold Medal, wept and spoke from the heart about the difficulty and joy involved in winning. Her comments came in response to an NBC interviewer and I’m sure NBC is very happy to have that piece of footage in the archives.
On the other end you have Evgeni Plushenko, the disgruntled Russian figure skater, who so disliked the outcome in the men’s competition (he won silver, American Evan Lysacek won gold), that he fabricated a “platinum” medal which he said he really won for his performance in Vancouver. There was a picture of Plushenko on his web site holding the fantasy medal. It has since been removed.
Then you have Canadian women’s figure skater Joannie Rochette, who’s 55-year-old mother died suddenly in Vancouver, just two days before her daughter skated the short program. Her performance was characterized as courageous and stunning, especially because the grief-stricken skater posted her best scores of the year and put herself in contention for a medal.
The responses of humans to tragedy and success are unpredictable at times. It usually takes extreme situations, like putting it all on the line in a tense, high-stakes situation as with these athletes, to bring to the surface what’s really going on inside a person.
Biblical Job wasn’t an athlete, but he was a famous man of his day. Job 1:3 says “He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.” When disaster hit, everyone knew. Stripped of wealth and children, he is “comforted” by friends who infer that Job probably had done something evil during his life to warrant God’s wrath. Reading Job gives you a very intimate look at the heart of an ancient man. But you truly see what he’s made of. And so it is with our Olympic heroes and villains, who’s stories are played out on television for a worldwide audience.
Why is it that God takes us to such extremes, as in the case of Job? What good comes of it? Perhaps we become more in touch with our humanness. We are usually humbled – nothing like everyone seeing the deep underbelly of our emotional life to bring you to the earth. And more than that, it shows what fragile vessels we are, vessels that God desires to fill up with treasure for all the world to see. As long as we’re unbroken vessels, no one can see the beauty and power of what we possess. See 2 Corinthians 4:7-12 for more.
I have no idea if Vonn, Plushenko or Rochette are Christians, but we have gotten a glimpse into the inner life of remarkable people. Part of the legend of such people is the way they’ve allowed all of us into their lives. In smaller ways, each of us has that same choice. But will we allow God to take us into places where others might see our frailty and his greatness? The way we answer that question will determine whether we live Gold Mettle lives.
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