In 1925 Gertrude Ederle tried to swim the English Channel. After eight hours and 46 minutes her coach made her stop because he feared she was swallowing too much saltwater. She disagreed, fired him, and came back the next year. On August 6, 1926, she entered the water in France at 7:08 in the morning. Twice that day squalls hit, and her new trainer urged her to quit. Her father and sister, riding in the boat, agreed with her that she should keep going. At 9:04 that night, after 14 hours and 31 minutes, she reached England. She became the first woman to swim the Channel and beat the previous record by two hours. Sometimes the voices that tell you to keep going are the ones worth hearing.
The 1960 Olympic marathon in Rome started at 5:30 in the evening and finished in the dark, with torches lighting the ancient streets. One of the runners was an Ethiopian named Abebe Bikila, and he was running barefoot. By 20 kilometers, he and Morocco’s Rhadi Ben Abdesselam had taken the lead, and they ran side by side for miles. About 500 meters from the finish, on the torchlit way, Bikila finally pulled away and won by 25 seconds. He crossed the line under the Arch of Constantine. People expected the favorite to win, not an unknown runner without shoes. You do not need the best equipment to finish the race God set before you. You need to keep running.
In 1938 Karoly Takacs was a sergeant in the Hungarian Army and a member of his country’s world champion pistol team. During an army exercise a grenade exploded in his right hand, his shooting hand, and shattered it. While recovering in the hospital he decided to teach himself to shoot with his left hand. Within a year he had won the national title. In 1948, at age 38, he made the Olympics in London. The world record holder, Carlos Enrique Diaz Saenz Valiente of Argentina, was surprised to see him and asked why he was there. Takacs said, “I’m here to learn.” He won gold and broke the record. On the podium the Argentine told him, “You have learned enough.” Takacs defended his title four years later.
NASA’s Opportunity rover landed on Mars on January 24, 2004. It was planned for a 90-day mission. At one point it got stuck in sand, and controllers spent six weeks freeing it a few inches at a time. In 2007 dust storms cut its power so low that all science was suspended, but after about six weeks it was back in action. It became the first human enterprise to travel more than a marathon on another world, and it kept going for over 28 miles. Opportunity outlived its expected life by 60 times. Its last contact came on June 10, 2018, after a planet-wide dust storm. A plan for 90 days became more than 14 years. Never underestimate what faithful, steady effort can do.
The Arctic tern is a small seabird with a big reputation. Audubon calls it a long-distance champion. It breeds in the far north, on coasts and tundra up to the northernmost land on earth. When the season changes, it heads south, and some Arctic terns may migrate farther than any other bird, flying all the way from the high Arctic to the Antarctic. Its travels take it to every ocean and near every continent. It spends most of its life on the move over open sea. Nobody hands it a map. It simply follows the path its Creator built into it, season after season. We are on a long journey too, and the God who guides the birds will guide us home.
