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What Lindsey Vonn wrote after her crash at the Olympics · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's Tuesday, February the 10th, 2026, and this is the Daily Article podcast from Dinosaur Forum.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrator.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's Daily article was authored by Cultural Theologian, Dr. Jim Dinosaur.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The American Alpine ski racer Lindsay von has been one of the most compelling stories at the Winter Olympics.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Eight gold medalists in the 2010 games she retired in 2019 after a variety of injuries and underwent a partial knee replacement in 2024.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: After the surgery, she felt so healthy that she decided to return to her sport and prepared at the age of 41 to compete in the current games.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: A week before competition began, she tore her left ACL during training.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: She persisted with her dream despite the pain, but she crashed in the downhill final Sunday and fractured her left tibia and injury that will require multiple surgeries to repair.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Standing in the starting gate yesterday was an incredible feeling that I will never forget.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Knowing I stood there having a chance to win was a victory in and of itself.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Bon continues.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And similar to ski racing, we take risks in life.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: We dream.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: We love.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: We jump.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes we fall.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes our hearts are broken.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we don't achieve the dream.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: We know we could have.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that is also the beauty of life.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can try.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I tried.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I dreamt.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I jumped.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope if you can take anything away from my journey.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's that you all have the courage to dare greatly.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Life is too short not to take chances on yourself, because the only failure in life is not trying.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, I have marveled at the discipline and sacrifice that someone like Lindsay von Displays, and I feel inspired by her decision to use her platform at this very painful time to encourage the rest of us to follow her example, to take risks in life and to take chances on ourselves.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: She deserves our admiration for her courage in competing on behalf of our country.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, I need to think with you about her last sentence I quoted.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her sentiment is by no means unique with Lindsey.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it expresses powerfully what could be called the defining ethos of our day.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this fact defines the greatest challenge of our day.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: The author and pastor Francis Chan warned.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: quote, our greatest fear should not be a failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter."
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is just another way of restating the old parable about the man who climbed the ladder of life only to discover that it was leaning against the wrong wall.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, our post-modern post-Christian, highly secularized culture has abandoned any notion that there is such a thing as a wrong wall.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no right or wrong, we're assured, but just what's right or wrong for you, so do what makes you happy.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this context, Lindsay's admonition makes perfect sense.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: The only failure in life is not trying.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the only failure in life in a biblical context is not trying to do God's will in God's power for God's glory.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is this?
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: In CS Lewis's the screw tape letters, a chief temperature named screw tape advises his demonic apprentice that humanity's quest for prosperity quote, Nits a man to the world.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: He feels that he is finding his place in it.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really home in Earth, which is just what we want.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we do choose faith in the Lord, Lewis adds that Satan wants us to do so, not because it's true, but for some other reason.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our enemy would rather we manipulate our faith or nefarious ends such as clergy abuse scandals, but he will accept our using faith for good reasons so long as they are not the best reason, which is intimacy with the Almighty Himself.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anything less than such intimacy cuts us off from the source of life, which is the living Lord Jesus.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: He alone is the cornerstone of our faith, according to Ephesians 2 verse 20.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is only when we abide in Jesus that we can bear much fruit, stated in John 15 verse 5.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing we do in our fallen and finite capacities, even for our Lord, can replace what God who made the universe can do in and through us.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why Paul prayed in Ephesians 3 verses 16 and 18 through 19 that God would grant the Ephesian Christians to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being that they might have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breath and length, the height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: In verse 20, the apostle could offer his prayer in confidence, knowing that God is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: His prayer is recorded in Scripture so it can be ours today.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have often warned over the years that self-sufficiency is spiritual suicide.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't read that in a book.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I learned it personally.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Depending on ourselves, keeps the spirit from doing what he can do only in lives fully yielded to him.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why Satan loves to tempt us with self-reliance that is so pervasive in our existentialist culture.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it is why Jesus is knocking at the door of our hearts right now, seeking true intimacy with us, recorded in Revelation 3 verse 20.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: As David said to our Lord in the message from Psalm 23 verse 6, your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bad news is that I need to pray these words from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer at the start of every day.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: To my
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: save thy servant that hath men help nor hope but thee alone.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The good news is that I can.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So can you.