I'm way too hard on the Olympics. I need to ease up, I need to get on board. I'm snobby about it is what I am because I like team sports and local hometown teams and following the same team for years and years and following free agency in the off season.

And then the Olympics come around and I roll my eyes at a little bit

so I'm like, oh great, it's some athlete nobody's ever heard of and obviously they're

very talented, very good at whatever it is they do, but you don't have the history and you don't know the

backstory, you don't have the investment, but the thing is, if you carefully watch the Olympics and you pay attention to all the work they do to make these little video vignettes that tell you the back story of the athletes, all of that changes.

I need to just watch those so I can appreciate it and get into it and

root for people the way I should because once you know what the athlete has overcome,

what they've been through, all of a sudden if they win it is that

much more meaningful and if they suffer the agony of defeat it is that much more

heartbreaking and likewise when we look at the Old Testament

there are certain parts of this story that in a bubble are pretty interesting

But other than just I'm rooting for the point of view character, it's not that impactful.

I root for whoever has a red, white, and blue on them. I'm an American. Great.

Oh good. Did our guys win? Great, then I feel great about that.

That's very different than knowing the backstory.

Same thing again with the Bible.

You know the backstory of what the people have gone through, there are moments where you

can way more celebrate along with the characters you're reading about in the text what has just been overcome given the backstory if you put in the effort to remember what the back story is.

And I think as we're looking at the very end of the book of Esther,

we were looking at Esther chapter 10 yesterday.

We are going to miss the fullness of this gold medal ceremony if we don't take a minute to remind ourselves

of where we've been and what we just overcame.

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