Run Free

By Dea­con Gre­gory M. Kirk

St. Joseph Catholic Church

But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impos­si­ble, but with God, all things are pos­si­ble.” Matthew 19:26

This past July, I spent two days in Find­lay, Ohio, watch­ing our Galion Var­sity and Junior Var­sity Boys Bas­ket­ball teams scrim­mage other teams from all over North­ern Ohio. I will always remem­ber the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing two Junior Var­sity teams from out of our area scrim­mage one another, while wait­ing for the Galion game that was sched­uled next.

I was struck by the win­ning per­son­al­ity, com­pet­i­tive drive, and team-playing spirit of a young man play­ing point guard for the team wear­ing red. He appeared to be about fif­teen years old, and he had an “all Amer­i­can” look – he reminded me of a model for Hol­lis­ter or Amer­i­can Eagle. He was a true leader, tal­ented on offense, and defense, and always will­ing to pass the ball to a team mem­ber who had a bet­ter shot. I was deeply impressed but couldn’t help but notice that the young man ran with an uneven, clumsy gait. It didn’t slow him down though, and he seemed to be all over the gym floor.

As I watched this young man play, I was struck by the appear­ance of his right leg for two rea­sons: His right leg was thin­ner than his left leg, and the thin right leg was cov­ered with tribal tat­toos. I was struck by the irony that this “preppy” look­ing young man’s leg was lit­er­ally cov­ered with tat­toos to the point that one couldn’t see flesh. I won­dered to myself if he lived with a birth defect that had affected his leg devel­op­ment. The tat­toos seemed incon­sis­tent with the young man’s appear­ance. A few min­utes later I noticed the shape of a large round ball at the base of the leg, show­ing through a white sock where an ankle should have been, and then I under­stood. A few tears found their way down my face when the real­iza­tion hit me – the young man was run­ning, jump­ing, and “win­ning,” while wear­ing an arti­fi­cial leg.

The game ended, and I didn’t see this young man for the rest of the day, but I prayed for the oppor­tu­nity to meet and speak with him. At the end of that hot July day, I looked over my shoul­der as I was load­ing a cooler of water back into the van, and the young man was stand­ing beside me, smil­ing. We shook hands, I intro­duced myself, and I con­grat­u­lated him on his skill, lead­er­ship, and self­less play­ing. He smiled, and said “thank you.” I asked him if he would mind shar­ing what hap­pened to his leg. He responded, “lawn mow­ing acci­dent when I was two years old.” I told him I was a min­is­ter, and that he would surely appear in one of my ser­mons some day. I asked him if he had a mes­sage to go with his story. He smiled again, and replied, “believe and trust in God, it’s all in your mind.” His name is Dustin Rie­man, and unless I am mis­taken, we will hear of him again. In the mean­time, when­ever I encounter the words of Jesus about God mak­ing the impos­si­ble, pos­si­ble, I will think of Dustin Rie­man, and smile.

No life event, sit­u­a­tion, hard­ship, per­son or peo­ple arrayed against us will ever pre­vail, if we believe, with God, “all things are pos­si­ble.” The pos­si­ble begins with our think­ing, it starts in our mind, and even­tu­ally blos­soms with God’s love and power into real­ity. We were cre­ated in the image and like­ness of a lov­ing God who wants us to suc­ceed, and live vic­to­ri­ously. When we strive to put God first in our lives, when we treat oth­ers with cour­tesy and respect, when Jesus is our model for daily living—great things hap­pen, and “all things are pos­si­ble.” Please don’t just take my word for it—a young man named Dustin Rie­man is liv­ing proof. See­ing is believing—and believ­ing means win­ning. God bless you, and your fam­i­lies as you sur­ren­der to His Power, and live out His vision for you.

Posted by Guest 1 Columnist on Feb 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.