A Word From David

Run With Perseverance 

I think it was Teddy Roosevelt who said that he turned to the sports page of the paper first because it chronicles hope and triumph while the front page is filled with tragedy and despair. 

I get that. While I seldom use sports metaphors or examples in sermons because lots of folks don’t catch the references, I have been an athlete and a fan my entire life. I played basketball regularly until Covid hit. I run. I play disc golf every chance I get. I enjoy following the ups and downs of the Nats, and I think Jacques Barzan was on to something when he said, “whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.” A shared love of baseball may be the only thing on which I’ll ever agree with George Will.

All of which is to say, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Olympics this month. “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” will always capture my imagination, but the stories of sport are deeper than the outcomes. The thing that has most held my attention over all these years is the creative journey itself: from imagining playing as a child to participating fully as an adult; from imagining a shot in a game to executing what you’ve seen in your mind’s eye; from imagining success – however you define it – to the point of letting go of fear and self-consciousness as you enter the flow of a game.

I’ve done all of those things, and it doesn’t matter that it was on the level of pick-up games in local parks, I’m pretty certain that the feeling you experience when everything comes together is the same on a back field of an urban park as it is in a gold medal game at the Olympics.

Why, other than the fact that the games just closed, am I thinking about sports today? Because that feeling that I have experienced when everything comes together in a game is pretty much the same feeling I have experienced when everything comes together in a congregation.

My hope for Western this fall is that together we will imagine, discern, articulate a clear purpose and let go of fear as we pursue it. 

Will there be a gold medal in it for us? Doubtful. But the deep joy we can experience together beats any medal we might find along the way.