Sunday, January 11, 2004
Sunday, January 11, 2004
After they had set a day to meet with him, they came to him at his lodgings in
great numbers. From morning until evening he explained the matter to them, testifying to the
kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the law of Moses and from
the prophets.
(Acts 28.23
NRSV)
The guy's name is Koji Harada, a Japanese teenager who literally went to great lengths to fulfill his greatest ambition: He wanted to be a sumo wrestler. But Koji had a problem. He was only 5 feet 2 inches tall. And according to the Japan Sumo Association, you've got to be 5'-8" to wrestle.
No problem, said Koji, who marched into a plastic surgeon's office and made his simple request: Doc, make me taller. Six inches taller. The good doctor obliged by injecting silicone implants into Koji's scalp, adding half a foot to the top of his head. . . The result? Conehead Koji now measures up, and now he's wrestling with the big boys.
Koji's not the first aspiring sumo wrestler to try to get ahead according to this report. Others before him have tried to meet the height requirement by using stretching machines. Some have even resorted to whacking themselves on the noggin with a club, resulting in monster goose eggs--just for sake of an extra centimeter or two. But the Sumo Association had seen enough. It recently banned silicone implants for "health reasons." Said one expert. "The association was afraid that other people would get other kinds of weird ideas for ways to make yourself taller."
Interesting. But not too unusual, I guess. People have dreams. Some people will go to great lengths--no pun intended--to see those dreams realized. It is not unusual for people to be ambitious. Indeed, you could make a good case that God placed a dose of ambition into our souls so that we would seek to do great things with our life.
What great things are you doing for God's kingdom?
Loving God, show me the way I should go in doing something great for your kingdom. Amen.
