If you have been keeping up with the Olympics the past two weeks, you have certainly seen some really great feats of athletics. There have been victories and heartbreaks; gold medal celebrations and silver medal sadness; vows to return and some to retire. It is fascinating to me all of the athletes who talk about their four years of preparation for this single moment in time. Take the 100 meter race for instance: Usain Bolt trained his whole life to run for just 9.63 seconds. Even in the 200 meter, at twice the distance and time, we might call his behavior over the last four years as insane. Let just speculate a little: even if he just trained a normal 8 hour day for six days a week (taking the Lord ’s Day off), he trains 172,800 seconds a week just on a run that takes less than 10 seconds. Obsession…I think so. We could calculate this out for all of our Olympic hopefuls and we would come up with much the same story for all the athletes and how they train. What is it like to come in second? To be just off the pace enough to be what many would call the first looser? I watched a short segment on the NBC coverage of the Games and to me it was a bit disturbing. When asked of the Silver placed winners how they felt to take second place, many responded with how awful they felt and disappointed of themselves they were. Then they brought in the Bronze medal winners and their attitudes were totally different. They were very thankful for the chance to be on the podium and represent their country at the Olympic Games. All that training and sacrifice and it come down to three individuals on the podium receiving medals; I would think that the athletes would just be happy they get to take home anything. With so many athletes competing for just those three medals, I sometimes wonder why they do what they do. Is it for the chance to stand on top of that podium and hear your National Anthem, or is there something more. There are more than 10,000 athletes competing more than 300 different events (about 900 medals given out). It has to be more than just winning medals. All this talk about the Olympic Games, takes me to the Hebrew analogy of our Christian walk: “Run with endurance the race marked out before you.” The word there used for endurance means patiently and consistently keep going. I found a little encouragement in the Silver medalist words that their race wasn’t good enough, and they will keep training until that Gold medal is around their neck. Paul is quick to remind us of how important it is to run the race well: Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize (1 Cor. 9: 24). Many people get caught up in the Olympic spirit so much that when it is all over, they will experience a sort of post-Olympic depression. Much of the reason is there is nothing left on the television, but much of it is that we forget we are all in a race. God has marked out the race before us. Are we going to run the race worthy of the prize? Or are we just going to sit on the couch and watch the others run their races? Paul uses this language in many different places, and never states that resting is an option. Keep going, never letting your guard down and run your race.