Grown Men, Sand Pits, and Eternity

Amidst the general euphoria in the Slack household at Team GB’s performance during the Olympics, I had something of an eye opening moment. We were sat watching the men’s long jump final (won by a Brit of course) and it dawned on me that we, along with 80,000 spectators in the stadium, and however many more thousands watching on TV, were cheering on a grown man jumping into a sandpit.

Now, I have nothing against sandpits, but still.

Then this last week Paul Ryan, Republican candidate for VP, dug himself a hole in the sand pit when he overstated his marathon personal best by a considerable margin. The media (well, at least the media in the UK) asked, ‘is it possible to forget your PB?’ Apparently not, according to the running fraternity.

And that got Mark and I talking.

You see, whilst neither of us would want to be the curmudgeon in the room, and whilst the apostle Paul tells us that physical exercise is of some value, and whilst the discipline of sport has something to say to life in general (2 Tim 2:1-7), and whilst work of (almost) any description is a gift and a mandate from God our Creator (Gen 1:28; 2:15), who has called each of us to our sphere of work (1 Cor 7:17), the hard truth is that neither the distance you can jump in a sand-pit, nor your marathon PB are going to count much in eternity. They just aren’t likely to feature.

And yet sport has become the god of this age.

And that reminded me of AW Tozer on the subject 'On Breading Spotted Mice'. You can read about that here. It’s well worth your time.