Life’s Greatest Tragedy

During the summer before my senior year in high school, I attended a Fellowship of Christian Athletes Conference in Ft. Collins, Colorado. The conference was a pivotal moment in my life. I met some amazing professional athletes and coaches who were inspiring and dedicated Christians who modeled for me what it meant to be a follower of Jesus.

One night as the camp attendees streamed into the evening service, a thunderstorm outside was raging, with lightning bolts streaking across the dark sky and loud claps of thunder echoing off the Rockies. People were scurrying inside to get out of the rain, anxious to hear the guest speakers share their faith stories. Some of America’s greatest sports figures were in attendance, and we were all excited to hear their faith journey.

Over one thousands high school athletes from all over the country crowded into the Colorado State auditorium to hear these professional athletes. There were a number of professional football players, a few major league baseball players, and several from the world of entertainment. Among the largest of the athletes was Paul Anderson, at that time the strongest man in the world. He crouched under a sturdy conference table with eight athletes sitting on top, each weighing over 200 pounds, and lifted the table off the ground. He also drove a nail through a two-by-four with the palm of his hand.

The world’s premier Yo-Yo champion, Bunny Martin, demonstrated his skills too. He lit a match with his Yo-Yo that was protruding out of the mouth of one of the high school athletes. He was seven or eight feet away from the nervous volunteer, when he continually spun his Yo-Yo toward the young man’s mouth where the match was clinched between his teeth. After a number of near misses, he finally hit the match just right, igniting it, much to the relief of the stunned volunteer and to the applause of amazed athletes. Needless to say, when Bunny asked for volunteers for another trick, I didn’t raise my hand!

But the person who left the most lasting impression with me was a young man named Brian Sternberg. Brian had been one of the premier pole vaulters in the world only a few years earlier. He had set one world record after another and was favored to win a gold medal in the 1964 Olympic Games. But he never made it to the Games.

A year earlier he was crippled by a freak accident while doing routine drills on a trampoline. He landed awkwardly on his back and neck, damaging his spinal column, rendering him a quadriplegic for the rest of his life. This incredibly gifted athlete would never walk again. Before he came on stage to speak, a projector showed newsreels of his pole vaulting exploits. His bronzed body glistened in the sun, depicting muscles and strength that reflected years of training, hard work, and discipline.

Paul Anderson carried the thin, pale former champion into the great hall and placed him in a wheel chair. Now he was only a shell of his former self. In a short time his injury had transformed his body from a world class athlete into a man who struggled to breathe. A special breathing apparatus was fixed to his mouth so he could breathe while he spoke in a voice just above a whisper.

The auditorium grew quiet as no one wanted to miss a word Brian Sternberg had to say. As he spoke, my eyes shifted back and forth to the screen where I saw a muscular athlete soaring over a bar with skill and grace to a cripple strapped into a wheel chair, pausing every few moments to catch his breath. It was an experience I will never forget.

He spoke of his faith in Christ, and how Christ had given him purpose and meaning, even though he was confined to a wheel chair. It was a terrible thing to be paralyzed, he said, but it would be far worse to live life without God. What had happened to him was tragic, but it would have been a far greater tragedy had he gone through life empty of meaning.

When the service concluded I walked back to my dorm room thinking about what Brian Sternberg had said. All the awards and honors, all the fame and recognition, as wonderful as they were, paled in comparison to the life he had found in God.

I took my time getting back to my room that night. As I walked slowly around the campus, pausing from time to time to chat with other campers, I felt a coolness in the air, perhaps from the earlier evening thunderstorm. But I did not want to go inside; I wanted to savor this moment, allow it to linger within me.

I had heard a young man, not that much older than I, tell me that life without God would be incomplete, empty, aimless. His words have never left me. I drew strength from his weakened and crippled body, and realized for the first time that only in a life with God would I be complete, only in life with God would I find meaning. In the midst of towering athletes, men and women whose feats of speed and strength had dazzled the world, no one had risen higher at a FCA conference in Ft. Collins, Colorado, than a quadriplegic in a wheel chair.

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