Goodbye, Sochi

These two Olympic Ceremonies were epic.  The imagery presented was fantastic, a flowing story of Russian history and culture - the portion above was our favorite, just after the fire was blown out by the big Sochi Bear.  These were nothing less than spectacular, once again setting the bar way up there.  It started with China in 2008, and now these ceremonies have a daunting task, each time being compared to the last ceremonies.  In this case, we were so impressed.  Sorry, Great Britain, but Russia outdid you this go-round.

Mommy and Daddy watched tonight, but Madison has school tomorrow, so she was in bed before it all started on television.  We promised to show her some clips online tomorrow - she was really wanting to watch some of it.

The time difference actually meant it was over some time this afternoon.  It's such a funny thing:  we were watching the gold medal ice hockey match at church this morning around 8:00 am or so (cheering on Sweden, of all countries - but they really got cheated two hours before the game even started).  Anyway, the time difference made it such that first thing in the morning, we're watching a live hockey game and passing along the scores to each other as we make those final service preparations.  One thing is certain:  we'll all be going to an ice hockey game together soon enough.  Everyone's sort of into hockey again, which I suppose is a good positive effect of the Winter Games.

Today we were babysitting for a few other friends, so Madison had herself a play date.  She's been excited about this, about having Matthew over for the afternoon to the house.  The two of them pretty much decimated the playroom upstairs, and then took the chaos into the great room downstairs.  About that time, Daddy started playing some movies on the television here, to sort of settle things down.  Foolish Daddy thought that at some point they'd actually want to nap or something, having slowed down so much.  No such luck - the only one napping was Daddy!

We had our church service this morning, and that went remarkably well.  It was simple enough, and nearly the end of our Excalibur series the second time around.  We had visitors who were as always impressed with what we do for the kids.  We really do go all-out.  Last night we stayed until 10:00 or 11:00 really, just trying to nail down the service details.  We did, and it all worked out well.

More on this day in a bit, but until then, here's probably our final Olympic-themed devotional entry:

“I am about to do something new. It is beginning to happen even now.” Isaiah 43:19 NIrV

Don’t be afraid to try something new. Case in point: Sage Kotsenburg. Being a champion wasn’t entirely his goal at the Olympics. He just wanted “to make snowboarding look cool and get kids stoked on it.”

He sure did that. On his last jump, he tried to do a new and exciting jump – just because he wanted to try something different. He’d never even tried it before, not even in practice! And here he is just doing it for fun. On his last run at the Olympics!

No pressure there! Sage had fun, and certainly got kids stoked for sure. And along the way, he found himself with a gold medal.

The lesson is obvious: don’t be afraid to try something new. There are risks with anything, and you want to be smart about things of course. But if you want to get to a level you’ve never gone to before, you’ve got to do some things you’ve never done before.

With God’s help, you can stomp some amazing tricks. And you can succeed – but along the way, don’t be afraid to try something new.