The Olympics: Citius, Altius, Fortius

I love the Olympics … the Summer Games and the Winter Games … and I love the fact that we now have Olympics to watch every two years with the alternating schedule. I don’t know why, but I tend to find the Winter Games particularly fascinating … perhaps because I grew up in southeast Alabama … a place where the winter sports are hard to find and hard to participate in. I’m almost 48 years old and I’ve never skied on anything I couldn’t swim in.

There are dozens of fascinating stories about the athletes competing in the games every year. In what I have seen thus far, NBC has done a stellar job in producing the human interest stories that, truth be known, are more than just filler. There are stories of hard work come to fruition and stories of hard work that didn’t. There are stories of athletes overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds in order to achieve and stories of athletes that had it all going for them and fell short. There are even commercials that tell stories of Olympic athletes.

We are avid viewers of the Winter Games, and have been as long as we have been married. We are fascinated by the newer events that have been added such as the snowboarding events, ski-cross, and freestyle. The Nordic events have been particularly fun to watch this year because the US has finally produced a team that is able to hold its own against the Scandinavians. Speed skating (both short-track and long) is almost always exciting. Then there are a couple of Winter Olympic sports for which we have a tough time summoning interest. My family in Connecticut will have to forgive me for not caring much about watching ice hockey; and though I find the strategy intriguing, watching curling can be almost as interesting as watching paint dry.

There will be some who might threaten to take my man card for this, though (try it … I dare you!): I like to watch figure skating. The Lovely Wife got me interested in it 20 years ago. Since Michelle Kwan is no longer competing our interest in the sport has waned a bit, but there is one thing that makes it worth watching to me: the voice commentary of Scotty Hamilton. It doesn’t matter who the skater is or from where, he is excited when they do well and empathetic when they don’t. His enthusiasm is contagious and it comes out in everything he says. He's fair, though, and calls a spade a spade ... but without malice or prejudice. I want to be around people like that ... so I want us to be people like that.

Ephesians 4:29 says: Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.