Olympic Immortality

Posted by Lorren on August 16, 2008

I’ve been watching the Olympics every day, and I’ve been enjoying watching Michael Phelps win golds and Nastia Luiken and Shawn Johnson fly through the air in gymnastics. I watch them with a little envy, wishing that I could swim that fast, or flip through the air (at all). I think about how cool it would be to be given the gold medal and hear the national anthem played for you. That would be pretty amazing.

If you were good enough, people would be talking about your flips and feats for years to come, like they do with Mary Lou Retton and Janet Evans. You come to watch the Olympics 20 years later and the cameras zoom in on you in the stands to show how you still root for your country.

But as well known as some of these people are today, their accomplishments will one day be lost in the fog of time. The names will be written down in the record books, but they won’t be remembered any more than my great-great grandmother is… there are census and other records around to say some of the things that she did as well.

To prove my point, can you name the winner of the 100m and 200m sprint events in the 1928 Summer Olympics? Can you even name where they were held? You could look them up (Percy Williams of Canada won the medals and they were held in Amsterdam), but it probably isn’t at the top of your memory. Can you name even one athlete from the Ancient Greek Olympics? You can look up some of these athletes, but out of the thousands of athletes that competed, only a relative handful are still known to us today. Even though we know some of their names, we know even less of the records they held.

There’s nothing wrong with being in shape, or even being an Olympic athlete. But it would be foolish to think that achieving gold medals is a way to be remembered forever.

But there are some things that we can do to insure our that our deeds will live throughout the ages. Everything that we do for God will last forever. While a record-setting swim will only last until the next person comes along to break it, sharing the love of Jesus with others is eternal.