Olympic Christianity

Watching the Olympics is a fascinating thing. We hardly ever get to either celebrate or even see some of the sports in which we are leading the world. So much time and energy focuses on football in the UK that you sometimes get the feeling that the only thing that matters in sport is that the national football team does well. At least in England that's the feeling.

But when it comes to the Olympics the cyclists and the sailors and the rowers lead the way.

What impresses me most is the physical price they are willing to pay in order to win gold. When the double gold medal winning swimmer Becky Adlington was interviewed by the BBC, she was asked something along the lines of ,"When does it begin to hurt?" She said that at about half-way you get stomach cramp from all the turning. "How do you get over that?" the interviewer asked, "You don't, you just have to keep going", she replied.

Just recently they've been re-running a programme on TV with Steve Redgrave taking a group of young men form Liverpool and training them to row. They started with 40 and very quickly they were down to 24. People dropped out because it was too much effort. They simply were not prepared to make the kind of sacrifice you have to make in order to be a competitive athlete.

Following Jesus is not an easy thing. If you want to do so wholeheartedly it will cost you. Billy Graham used to say, "Salvation is free, discipleship will cost you everything you have."

The question we need to ask is, "Are we willing to pay the price to follow him fully?" Many seem to choose limited commitment. They follow when things are going well, but fall back when things do not go so well. I know the feeling.

But rather like the Olympic athletes, I know that in the end the price is worth paying for the prize that awaits.