Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

I have been trying to keep up with the Olympics. I used to be pretty assiduous about tracking times of events and planning when I would watch. Now it is a little more catch as catch can but more often than not I end up watching rowing or skateboarding rather than swimming or gymnastics. It is all good though - it is amazing to watch folks who have devoted themselves to such a degree.

I did manage to catch an interview with one of the athletes in which he mentioned how much he thanked God for the success that had brought him to Tokyo. On Twitter someone snarkily said, "I think God has better things to do than watch the Olympics." A common feeling I am sure in these more secular days.

I wonder though if there is not something good and true about believing that God will intervene in the most mundane of circumstances? For example, We spend the Christmas season celebrating the inbreaking of God into a manger and celebrating the very real birth of God With Us. If that scene teaches anything then it teaches that God embraces us even in the midst of some very human realities – because of those very human realities. God seems to speak less in the grand than in the simple, the essential, and the human – for that is what we might understand.

The point is not that God cares about a game – but that the game is one part of God. The ball, the field, the players, the sweat, the dreams, the fans, the stadium, the city, and more are all caught up in the care and attention of God.

God may not have a scorepad and one of those beerhats on – or he may – I rather like to think he does at times though. The Incarnation revealed to us a God who wanted to know and love his people – in all of their passionate silliness – in all of their victories and defeats.

For the men playing volleyball or the women playing soccer or the boys and girls in the Special Olympics or the countless others competing, striving, and praying – those feats are no mean thing. They are not hobbies or a lark they are the stuff of dreams and longing. They form character and virtue.

If God is not involved, deeply and passionately, in every human being’s dreams and hopes (however picayune they may seem from our perspective), then I am not sure what God is involved in. There is something deeply faithful about asking God to intervene in the simplest parts of our days and expecting that God is active in every victory.

May we never forget to ascribe our success to God and to thank him for our failures as well for they are a chance to find ourselves depending on him even more deeply.

Yours in Christ,
Fr Robert