The Olympics are over.

It may not be the case around your house, but around our home the end of the Olympics is always sad. Even in a year like this one, when we did not watch as much as we have in years past, we were sorry to see them end because we have always tuned into them. In fact, one member of the family is able to recall virtually every Olympic city, year and women’s figure skating champion since she was a teen. Such is the love we have for the games.

Of course, the Salt Lake Games were memorable games. For one, they will be remembered for security. In the post 9-11 era, there were more security people there than athletes. And it worked. None of the problems we feared—or at least imagined—came to pass.

But it will also be remembered for controversy. Even before the games, there was the apparent bribery of Olympic organizers. Then during the games we discovered that skating judges are not always objective in evaluating performances. Truly shocking!

But of course, that for which every Olympics is remembered are the athletes. This year will be no different.

• We will remember Jim Shea, the third generation of the Shea family to compete in the Olympics. He took home gold in the skeleton to boot.
• We will remember Vonetta Flowers. She was a track star at the University of Alabama-Birmingham when she arrived at the games. She left not only as a gold medallist in the two-woman bobsled but as the first African-American to ever win a medal in the winter games.
• We will remember Apolo Anton Ohno. In short-track speed skating he crawled across the finish line for silver in the 1000 meters and won gold in the 1500 meters when the man who finished first was disqualified.
• And, of course, we will remember the ice skaters--Sarah Hughes for her surprising win, Michelle Kwan for her heartbreaking loss, and Sale and Pelletier for their better-late-than-never gold medals.

At the end of the Olympics there are medal counts and national flag-waving, but it still comes down to the men and women who play the games. They are the ones we not only recall but also admire.

That said, watching the Olympics can’t help but lead us to wonder what sets these athletes apart. For example, there are hundreds—if not thousands—of competitive ice skaters in the world. Yet we know the names of Hughes, Kwan and Cohen. Why is that? What sets them apart? What is it about them that landed them in the Olympics?

Obviously talent has a lot to do with it. All of those who make it to the games have some natural, God-given abilities. After all, you just don’t put a pig on skates and watch it do a triple Lutz. Talent is essential.

So also is training. Sarah Hughes strapped on her first skates at age 2. A few short years later, she declared herself a future Olympian. But she did not get to Salt Lake City on talent alone. It took training. Every day for years her coach has picked her up, taken her from her New York home to a New Jersey ice rink where she would skate, spin and jump again and again and again. For years she has been honing her abilities on the grindstone of hard work.

Still, the question remains. Is that all it takes to be an Olympian—talent and training? Are those who make it to the games just the most talented and best trained skaters and skiers, snowboarders and curlers? Is that what separates them from the rest?

No, I would suggest there is another factor—one that may not always overcome a lack of talent or training but without which the most talented and best trained athlete cannot long succeed. And that is passion—a desire to be the best. Those who make it to the Olympics—those who succeed there—don’t do it on talent and training alone. They do it because they have a passion, a desire that drives them toward excellence. They want it and they want it badly.

I don’t know if you have seen the movie "Chariots of Fire," but it captures that passion. It is the story of two post-World War I British athletes. One is Eric Lytle. He is a Christian, a man of great faith and integrity. He is driven by what he tells his sister is the joy he feels from God when he runs. The other is Harold Abrahams. Abrahams is Jewish, devout and also of great integrity. He too is driven, but his passion is to show the British aristocracy that he and his people are better than the British social system suggests. Both were talented. Both trained hard. But what separated them from the rest was their passion, their desire.

What was true of Olympians in 1924 is true today. Passion, desire, that inner fire is what keeps talented men and women training diligently, honing their skills, overcoming injuries. They live, eat and breathe their sport because nothing matters more than reaching their goal, be it making the Olympics or taking home gold. Passion—that is what the greats have.

What is true of the Olympian’s life is also true of the spiritual life. Passion makes the difference.

All of us are created in God’s image. We have been made in such a way that our lives can be molded into Christ-likeness.

All of us are invited to work at becoming more like our Lord. That is what it means to "follow Jesus," to become his disciple, his student. Discipleship means learning from one’s teacher.

But whether we grow as we can grow, whether we develop the Christian character we are capable of developing, depends on desire. It depends on our passion, whether we really yearn for it or whether we faint-heartedly hope that maybe it will just come.

Christ-like lives emerge from a burning desire to do what God wants.

That is the point of Jesus’ fourth Beatitude. "Blessed," he says, "are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness." Or, as another translation puts it, "Happy are those who hunger and thirst to do what God desires."

The language of hunger and thirst is significant. They represent the necessities of life. They stand for that which we cannot live without. Jesus was saying that the blessed are those who desire to do God’s will with the same passion that they hunger and thirst for food. For the blessed, doing what God desires is life itself.

That was certainly true of Jesus. We could point to many such moments in his life, but consider just one—the temptations. Immediately after his baptism, he is led into the wilderness where he faces three temptations. He is given three options for bringing a world to acknowledge him as Lord and Savior. He can feed them. He can overpower them. He can awe them. Any one of the three will work; they are just not what God wants done. And Jesus, knowing that, refuses. His desire, his passion, is doing God’s will in God’s way. That is more important to him than the consequences—even his own death on the Cross.

His disciples would share that passion.

The Acts of the Apostles is a wonderful book full of people hungering and thirsting to do God’s will. We see it in Peter and John who when they are hauled before the court and told to stop proclaiming Jesus as Lord refuse to do so. We see it in Stephen the deacon who, when dragged before the council on charges of blasphemy, boldly proclaimed the very Gospel that had gotten him into trouble. We see it in Paul who endured virtually every hardship imaginable to take the message of Jesus to the Gentiles, to the people he once hated but now loved. All of these had a passion, a desire, a hunger and a thirst, to be what God wanted them to be and to do what God wanted done.

But one doesn’t have to be Peter or Paul to know the blessedness of hungering and thirsting after righteousness. George Barna is a pollster, sort of a Christian George Gallup. He has done research on Christians and churches throughout the United States. Recently he was asked what most impresses him. Do you know what he said?

Of course, this poses a question, doesn’t it? How passionate are you about doing God’s will? Is it your reason to live? Is it for you the very food and drink of life? Is it what life is all about? Christ promises that those for who it is are indeed the blessed.