Every time the Olympics come around again, I am struck by the unique spirit and drive of the Olympic athletes. They come from around the world, having spent the previous four years in rigorous training. That training often includes rising before the sun most every morning, and doing a great deal of preparation and work before most folks roll out of bed. It takes serious and sustained desire, ambition, self-denial, and just raw work, to maintain the peak of physical and mental fitness. Whole families, and even towns sometimes, become involved in the athlete’s training and support. All of this is done so that the athlete can travel to some distant corner of the globe to get one shot at gold—and perhaps miss it by a few hundredths of a second. Any little thing that goes wrong can throw the first place contender completely out of the medal running. Everyone knows that if you are out of the medals, you virtually cease to exist in terms of the glory of the Olympics. The journalists stop talking about you very quickly, and no one remembers your name.

I wonder what the outcome would be if we treated our daily Christian experience as though it were an Olympic event. What if we ran for that prize as though it were the only thing that mattered? What if we acted as though we understood that it would take years to get in shape for the race—and that was fine with us? What if we got up early in the morning to pray, read from God’s Word, and meditate upon it? What if we denied ourselves some of the pleasures of life for the sake of the prize? What if we spent most of our effort on developing the kind of friends who would help us stay on the path? What if we did whatever it took to achieve excellence?

The wonderful thing about the Christian walk, as opposed to an Olympic event, is that you can win gold no matter how many times you fall, and you don’t have to compete with anyone to gain the prize. Moreover, the glory of Olympic gold fades swiftly, and is ultimately vanity. The prize obtained by the victorious Christian is eternal, infinitely valuable, and never fades.