GREG RATHJEN
I saw the story of the two speedskaters and I began to think of good news coverage.
Have you been watching the Olympics? Giving and caring people are still on the scene.
Denny Morrison and teammate Gilmore Junio, from Fort St. John, B.C. are at the Olympics.
Morrison entered and tried for his third Olympics but he was hindered recovering from a broken leg.
Falling in the Olympic trials, he failed to qualify for the event.
Junio, raced the 500m and finishing 10th.
Talking it over with the coaches, Junio gave up his spot in the 1,000m to Morrison who then won the silver medal for Canada. One reporter was quoted as saying, “This is unbelievable. This is unprecedented. No one in the history of the Olympics has ever given their spot away and then to have the substitute win a medal.”
Morrison, was quoted as saying, “That’s the spirit of Canada.”
There was a medal created in 1964, for Olympic sportsmanship.
In the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria an Italian bobsledder Eugenio Monti had won two silver medals and was hoping to win the gold.
The British two-man bobsled team’s bobsled had a broken bolt, Monti loaned the team one from his own sled. The British team won gold in that event.
Monti also repaired a broken axle on the Canadian four-man bobsled, allowing the Canadians to achieve a gold medal.
So the sportsmanship performance began to be honoured at each set of Games.
This week we picked up the story of the disappointment of Canadian cross-country ski coach Justin Wadsworth as all his own athletes were all eliminated early.
Standing near the finish line he was watching Russian Anton Gafarov coming over a rise struggling miserably.
He’d crashed and broken a ski.
Parts of his ski were broken and tangled around his foot.
With a broken ski he was dragging himself to the finish. Wadsworth looked around and seeing no one was moving he grabbed a spare ski he’d brought for Canadian racer Alex Harvey, ran onto the track and stopped Gafarov.
Wadsworth pulled off the broken equipment and replaced it.
Gafarov set off again with dignity as he crossed the finish line, thanks to Canadian coach.
As we work in the churches and ministries of our area we seek to demonstrate the same spirit of cooperation.
I have served five areas from Manitoba to B.C. and find the ministerial in Lacombe to be one of the best I have experienced in 40 years.
We are able to work together and help one another.
We seek to follow the example that the Lord said in His prayer in John 17:21 “My prayer for all of them is that they will be of one heart and mind, just as you and I are, Father—that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me.”
The Lord reminded us to practice what we preach and live like we believe the message is true.
In John 13:35 (NASB) it says, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
A. M. ‘Greg’ Rathjen is the pastor at Bentley Community Church.