PSALMS OF ASCENT: Perseverance Psalm 129

PSALMS OF ASCENT: Perseverance  Psalm 129

 

Well, we're over a week in now, which means many of us are suffering from sleep deprivation.  Talking, of course, about the Olympics.  Anybody else?  Week plus in and you've stayed up way too late watching sports that in a week you won't care about!  I noticed that I'm spoiled; I don't even want to watch the qualifying races, I just want to watch the medal races.  I also want to know ahead of time if we win, because I don't want to watch it if we didn't win.  I'm spoiled!  There's been one story though.....I love the way NBC weaves in these human interest stories throughout the competition.  One of those stories that stood out to me this year is the story of the Refugee Team that's competing.  A team of essentially homeless Olympians from different parts of the globe, but parts of the globe where, because of the strife that's going on in their own country, they've had to flee.  A number of them joined together as a team of refugees competing in the Olympics.  One of those refugees is Yursa Mardini.  She grew up as an Olympian swimmer from Damascus and part of Syria.  She was training in pools where there were three or four holes where bombs had blown into the roof of the building where she was training.  She had to flee from Syria.  She traveled through Lebanon to Turkey and then left Turkey and was trying to get to Greece when the boat she was in----a little dinghy with 20 people in it, designed for six people----had the engine fail about 30 minutes from shore.  This young, eighteen-year-old (Yursa Mardini) jumps in the water with three other people and ties ropes around her waist and legs and starts swimming.  For three-and-a-half hours she swims.  They eventually get the boat to shore and save all 20 lives.