The Winter Olympics are here again, full of stories of amazing feats of physical prowess and for the most part, they are feats performed by quite young people. Female figure skaters are in their mid teens and most of the other sports are performed best by athletes in their mid to upper twenties.
In the midst of this, I read a story about Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, who became the oldest athlete ever to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics, when he won a gold medal in the "10 km sprint" (biathlon) this year at Sochi. Maybe this should have made me feel better, since I am still younger than he is, by several months, but it made me realize (once again) that I am now very unlikely to win a medal at the Winter Olympics. I am just too old (among other reasons).
Yet, it made me realize as well what a blessing it is that God doesn't give up on us when we turn thirty. The reality is, that in the kingdom of God, there is no age at which we stop being useful.
I am reminded of Moses. At the age of eighty, he was herding sheep for his father-in-law in the desert. It was a dead end job, if ever there was one -- until he saw a bush in flames and heard a call to shepherd the Israelites out of Egypt.
So, while I am giving up on the idea of winning a gold medal in the skeleton at the Pyeongchang Oympics in 2018, I am not giving up on the idea of being useful to God. For, in God's kingdom, age really is just a number and forty is just a beginning.
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