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At the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924, the sport of canoe racing
was added to the list of international competitions for the first time.
The favorite team in the four-man canoe race was the United States
team. One member of the U.S. team was a young man by the name of
Bill Havens.
As the time for the Olympics neared, it became clear that Bill’s
wife would give birth to their first child about the time that Bill would
be competing in the Paris games.
In 1924 there were no jet airliners from Paris to the United States,
only slow-moving, oceangoing ships.
And so Bill found himself in a dilemma. Should he go to Paris and
risk not being at his wife’s side when their first child was born? Or
should he withdraw from the team and remain behind?
Bill’s wife insisted that he go to Paris. After all, he had been
working toward this for all these years. It was the culmination of a
lifelong dream.
Clearly, the decision was not easy for Bill to make.
Finally, after much soul searching, Bill decided to withdraw from
the competition and remain behind with his wife so that he could be
with her when their first child arrived.
Bill considered being at her side a higher priority than going to
Paris to fulfill a lifelong dream.
To make a long story short, the United States four-man canoe team
won the gold medal at the Paris Olympics. And Bill’s wife was late
in giving birth to her first child. She was so late that Bill could have
competed in the event and returned home in time to be with his wife.
People said, “What a shame!”
But Bill said he had no regrets. After all, his commitment to his
wife was more important then, and it still was now.
The story of Bill Havens is a story of how one man paid a high
price to fulfill a commitment to someone he loved. It makes an
especially fitting introduction to today’s Scripture readings. For each
of those three readings deals with the subject of commitment.
The first reading deals with the commitment of the people of Israel
to God and the difficulty they found living it out.
The gospel reading deals with the commitment of the disciples to
Jesus and the difficulty they had living it out.
Finally, the second reading deals with the commitment of two
people in marriage and the difficulty they encountered living it out.
And the story of Bill Havens fits in here best.
But Bill’s story reveals something important about commitment.
The temptation we most frequently face in our commitments is not
to break them or fail to fulfill them. Rather, it is the temptation not to
live them out as fully as we could.
In other words, we keep our commitments but live them out only
50 to 70 percent, instead of 100 percent.
The story of Bill Havens is the story of a person who lived out his
commitment 100 percent. It also inspires us to live out our
commitments as generously as he lived out his.
There’s a sequel to the story of Bill Havens. And the sequel reveals
a second important point about commitments.
The generosity with which we live out our commitments will have
a powerful impact not only on the one to whom we are committed but
also on those around us – and often on people we don’t even know.
The child eventually born to Bill and his wife was a boy, whom
they named Frank.
Twenty-eight years later, in 1952, Bill received a cablegram from
Frank. It was sent from Helsinki, Finland, where the 1952 Olympics
were being held. The cablegram read, and I quote it exactly:
“Dad, I won. I’m bringing home the gold medal you lost while
waiting for me to be born.”
Frank Havens had just won the gold medal for the United States in
the canoe-racing event, a medal his father had dreamed of winning
but never did.
Bill Havens commitment, 28 years earlier, became the inspiration
for his son. Frank made it the model for a commitment of his own:
to show his deep appreciation to his dad and his generous
commitment to his mother and to himself.
And that’s the important point that parents often don’t think about.
The generosity with which they live out their commitment to one
another is carefully observed by their children. And their children
will often use it as the model for their own commitments in life.
I close with this. We might compare our commitment to a stone
thrown into a lake. It does more than impact the lake at the point of
entry. It ripples out and impacts the lake far beyond the point of entry
– sometimes even to distant parts of the lake. Only God knows the
full impact that our actions have on others.
And so when we come to die, and appear before God in judgment,
we will be amazed at the far-reaching impact of our actions – just as
Bill Havens would be amazed at the far-reaching impact that his
commitment to his wife has had, inspiring hundreds of thousands of
people he never knew.