When Faith Skates Onto Impossible Ice

On February 22, 1980, inside the Olympic Fieldhouse in Lake Placid, New York, twenty young Americans lined up against the most dominant hockey team the world had ever seen. The Soviet Union had won four consecutive Olympic gold medals. Their roster was stacked with seasoned veterans who had crushed the NHL All-Stars 6-0 just a year earlier. Thirteen days before the Games, they had dismantled this very American squad 10-3 in an exhibition at Madison Square Garden. No credible analyst gave coach Herb Brooks's college kids a chance.

But those young men, average age twenty-one, played with something the odds couldn't measure. When captain Mike Eruzione fired a wrist shot past Soviet goaltender Vladimir Myshkin midway through the third period, giving the U.S. a 4-3 lead, the arena erupted. For the final ten minutes, goalie Jim Craig stopped every Soviet shot while ten thousand voices counted down the clock. Al Michaels asked the question the whole nation was already answering: "Do you believe in miracles?"

When David walked toward Goliath, he carried no sword, no shield, no armor — only five smooth stones and a Name. "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin," he declared, "but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty." David's confidence was never in his own ability. It was rooted entirely in the character of his God.

Faith does not ignore the size of the giant. It simply knows that the Giant-Maker is bigger still. Whatever impossibility you face this week, you do not face it in your own strength. You face it in the name of the Lord Almighty — and that has always been enough.