Our last Messy Church before we go on our summer holidays was on the theme of perseverance, and by popular request we held a Messy Sports on our Village Sports field. I had been into the Primary School the day before to hold a school assembly and we explored the theme of perseverance using the example of Derek Redmond.
Many of you may remember the story of Derek Redmond. He was a British Olympic sprinter and was expected to take the gold in the 400m sprint in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. However on the day of the semifinals he left the starting blocks as was looking good, then 120m into the race he heard a pop, and thought it was someone in the crowd, he carried on for 2 or 3 strides and then the pain hit, like a bullet in the back of his calf and he collapsed to the floor in agony. A first aider came to his side, a race official came to his aid, but Derek shunned them all, then this man ran up behind him, lifted him off the ground and put his arm around his shoulder and the two of them completed the race. That man, as Derek put it, was “my old man”, his father. And his father shouted into his ear, “you’ve just got to get up one more time!”
Derek says in a later interview that is it had been that first aider, or the race official who helped him finish, the reaction wouldn’t be the same, but as it was his father – the crowd erupted, the world applauded.
In this interview, Derek is asked, “how do you become successful?” and his reply is, “ the easiest and most relevant answer is to get up just one more time than you’ve been knocked down.” He knew at that moment he was not going to qualify, but he wasn’t going to let that defeat him, he was determined to finish the race. He goes on to say that people are not born successful, they may be born into successful families, but some of the strongest people are those who have had lots of problems and learnt how to face them.
Derek persevered, he finished the race, not with a gold medal, and not even qualifying. He had the help of his father, and he was applauded louder than the winner of that race.
It was so good to see how those children at our Messy Sports, which were certainly not an Olympic event, persevered to finish the race – determined to get more peas in a cup than before, determined to get the “egg” round the tree without dropping it, (some minor cheating going on here!), or determined to get more bricks out of the giant Jenga tower than previous efforts.
In our faith do we get up one more time when we have been knocked down? Do we allow our Father to come and lift us up and carry us to the finishing line? What reward we will receive!
Prayer: Loving Father, thank you that you help us when we are down. Help us to persevere not for our own reward but for the reward of a place in your team. AMEN