Armodoxy Today: Olympic Second

The Olympic competitions are unavoidable these days as athletes from throughout the world are competing for the top titles and the medals: gold for first place, silver for second and bronze for third. Of course, the networks that carry the actual games are busy sending signals across the globe, and everyone else is quick to report results, with an emphasis on their favored team.

I find the level of competition fascinating. We are watching world class athletes push the limits of their bodies. Take a moment to watch a competition and especially pay attention to how the competitions that are measured by time, such as a race or a swim meet. I watched a relay race that was decided by one one-hundredth of a second! I mean, how fast is that? It’s faster than the blink of an eye. Perhaps the flap of a fly’s wing? Let’s agree that it’s fast. Super fast. Now think about it, when you hear that the world competition is decided by one one-hundredth of a second, It means that the winner who took home second place, the silver medal was only off by a hundredth of second! You look at them standing in the winners area. The gold medal winner is standing there and next to the guy who did not win.

Now let’s be fair. The guy who lost by a hundredth of a second is indeed a world class athlete! Come on… even the athlete who comes in last place, is world class and misses the gold by only a few seconds. But all is fair in love and Olympic competitions and he has to step down and accept the silver medal. In the days of non-electronic time pieces, measuring such differences might not have been observed, but they are today, and the athlete who has prepared all of his or her life for this competition is set off by this fraction of a second by which he or she missed the mark.

I couldn’t help but make the parallel in Christian life and the notion of sin. Sin is simply missing the mark. It’s a term that makes sense in archery. Imagine a target with a black dot in the center of a series of red and white circles. Anything outside of the black dot, what we refer to as the bull’s eye, is sin. Some people hit the line between the red and black, others hit the space on the third rung and still others miss the target completely. All of the hits are in sin.

In our life, we sin. It doesn’t mean we are bad people, rather, it only means that we are people. Only God is sinless. Anything outside of the center – outside of perfection – is sin, or being human. And since we all miss the mark of perfection, ours is not to judge. Leave the judging for the Olympic games and focus rather on improving yourself. The difference between Gold, Silver and Bronze may be seconds, but in the sight of God those seconds melt into an amalgama called life.

Let us pray, Grace us, O Lord the vision to follow in the path of the saints. Strengthen in me the resolve to improve on the graces you have bestowed upon me, to exercise my soul with love and compassion, in my path toward the Kingdom. Amen.

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