As the World Comes Together

It’s getting close.  Seventy days and counting.  Ten weeks until the world’s attention turns to London for the 2012 Olympic Summer Games.

It’s not often that I turn on the news or read an article that I don’t shake my head in disgust, or wipe my eyes because tragedy has struck once again in our world.  It’s difficult hearing the words that make up the news of the day.  Words like enemy, warfare, suicide bomber, rebel, casualties and so on, ring in my head.  It causes me to question the world—to wonder what is ahead economically, politically, spiritually, and otherwise.

There’s something about the Olympics, though, that makes me stop for two and a half short weeks and put aside thoughts about current issues of the day.  I’m drawn into the stories of amazing athletes who have sacrificed, trained, overcome, and accomplished many challenges to get to this place—all for the love of sport.  Their stories encourage me and give me hope about the future.

I see in these athletes a glimpse of what it looks like when the world comes together.  Think about that, when the world comes together.

It’s a sobering thought—beautiful actually.

There are two young men from New Jersey.  They are brothers.  And they are in the midst of competing for one open spot on the US Men’s Trampoline Team.  I saw an interview with them on the Today Show.  Matt Lauer asked the question many were wondering.  How do you do this when you’re brothers?  The younger one responded with something like this:  When we walk into the gym we are competitors.  When we walk out we are brothers.

When the World converges in London this summer, perhaps we walk in as strangers, but after two and half weeks together, maybe, just maybe, we walk out as friends.