Unqualified

A few weeks ago I met some of the Moldovan Olympic Swimming Team.  They were practising in our town Leisure Centre in preparation for the Olympics.  Of course when I say I met them what I mean is that one day as I left the changing room some of them were arriving to head to their special area to change and we nodded a hello to one another.  Still, maybe it will be THAT girl who wins the Gold medal!  I tried to remember their faces.  Certainly watching them some days ploughing up and down the pool was a reminder that it takes an ability and dedication far in excess of my swimming prowess to compete on such a stage.

Having felt that sense of distance, I can now report that (as things turned out) I had a lot more in common with the two young ladies I nodded at than I first supposed.  To my way of thinking there on the other side of the pool were the Olympic competitors and over with me and the assortment of splashers from Wycombe District were those who would watch them on television.  I was wrong in this interpretation.

This week they were back.  Well, no, he was back.  For as it turns out only one 17 year old guy Danila achieved the standard to qualify and all the other Moldovan swimmers will, like the rest of us, be watching him and the other competitors on television!

Many people interpret the divide between those religious people furiously practising their divine devotion and their own futile spiritual splashings as the one that is likely to one day see them disqualified from the prize (if there is one).  Most of the religious people think this with a passion too.

It does appear, though, that only one human being qualifies.  It is in Jesus's victory that we have our only hope of sharing in final glory - it is in him, not as well as him, that we can qualify.