A subtle, faithful witness

I was running at the gym this evening, watching the final few miles of the men's marathon at the Olympics in Beijing. The winning runner was Samuel Wanjiru from Kenya, who finished in a time of 2:06:32. That means he was averaging less than 5 minutes per mile over the entire race! Not only did he win Kenya's first-ever gold in the marathon, but he also set an Olympic record time.

Needless to say, I've never run one mile in less than 5 minutes, let alone over 26 of them. Talk about motivation! There I was, running my 3 miles at a little less than 7 mph on a treadmill. And this guy was winning gold halfway around the world running through the smoggy streets of Beijing at a faster clip than I've ever even dreamed about.

The thing that really struck me about Wanjiru's win was what he did immediately afterward. He dropped to his knees right after he crossed the finish line and put his hands on the ground with his head down. At first I figured he was just collapsing from exhaustion (after all, who could blame him??). But after pausing for a long moment, he started to get up and made the sign of the cross on his chest as he did so. Then it hit me: He was praying. Here's a guy who just set an Olympic record time in the marathon, inside a stadium of screaming fans, with TV cameras all over him. And he take the time to stop and thank God for sustaining him through that grueling race.

Now you might say that Wanjiru doesn't deserve to be praised for doing what he ought to do anyway. But I think stopping to pray at that point took considerable discipline (considering what he had just endured and accomplished) and courage (considering the location, i.e., a country ruled by an atheistic totalitarian government). You'll often see American athletes make a comment about their "personal Lord and Savior" Jesus Christ when they get interviewed after a big win, but the way they do it often strikes me as perfunctory and almost thoughtless. Wanjiru's act, on the other hand, was a prolonged, subtly faithful gesture.

I immediately thought about what Tertullian talks about in his treatise De Corona, where he refers to spiritual practices in which we engage even though the Bible doesn't specifically command them. He uses the sign of the cross as an example, and says something to the effect that we cross ourselves in all our going out and our coming in. In a way, Wanjiru was doing what his fellow African, Tertullian, had described 1800 years earlier. He was engaging in a tradition-laden, faithful practice that helps to remind him where his life is truly located. And thanks to television, he made a witness to the rest of the world as well.