Every two years, we have the tremendous privilege of watching God’s miraculous ways unfold through the sheer strength, agility, and prowess of Olympic athletes. It is both humbling and inspiring to witness what the human body is capable of. To see Ilia Malinin backflip in midair on the ice, or to watch ski jumpers launch themselves through open air with nothing but focus, courage, and gravity guiding their landing, is to be reminded that human ability is not self-generated. I feel a similar sense of awe when standing at Bryce Canyon in Utah, where jagged red and orange hoodoos rise in formations that feel unmistakably intentional. Moments like these make something clear. Strength is a gift from God. It is refined through discipline and training, but it is granted from beyond us.
And then there are Olympic stories that break the usual pattern entirely. The Israeli bobsled team is one of them.
Israel is not a winter sports nation. There are no frozen tracks carved into the landscape, no childhood systems funneling athletes from local rinks to Olympic teams. And yet, against every expectation, Israel qualified a bobsled team for the Milan Cortina Winter Games. Not through a deep institutional pipeline or generational tradition, but through vision and persistence. Through a refusal to accept that climate, geography, or precedent should determine what is possible.
To understand why this story feels so different, we must first return to one of the most unsettling military narratives in the Bible, the story of Gideon.
When Gideon first appears in the book of Judges, he is hiding. He threshes wheat in a winepress, fearful of Midianite raiders. He does not see himself as strong, capable, or chosen. And yet God calls him a mighty warrior and commands him to lead Israel into battle. Gideon gathers an army of tens of thousands and finally seems ready to act. That is when God intervenes.
The army is too large. Too capable. Too likely to confuse success with self sufficiency.
God begins to dismantle it. First, those who are afraid are sent home. Then more are dismissed. Until Gideon is left with just three hundred men. God explains the reason plainly.
This is not a story about courage alone. It is a story about clarity. God reduces Gideon’s force so that when victory comes, its source cannot be misread.
The Israeli bobsled team follows a strikingly similar pattern.
The team is not built from a single discipline or system. It includes a Druze rugby player from Maghar, a former pole vaulter from Tel Aviv, a sprinter whose Olympic dreams were derailed by repeated injuries, and a shot put champion who narrowly missed qualification years earlier. None of them grew up training for bobsled. None of them were shaped for this from childhood. Each arrived carrying a different athletic past and a different disappointment.
And even that fragile structure was tested.
While training in Italy ahead of the Games, the team’s apartment was burglarized. Passports were stolen. Specialized equipment disappeared. Thousands of dollars worth of gear vanished overnight. In Olympic terms, this should have been disastrous. The loss of documents alone can end a campaign.
Instead, the team continued training.
There was no time to indulge the chaos. The Games were still coming.
In Gideon’s battle, victory does not come through superior weapons or tactics. His soldiers carry torches hidden inside clay jars. When the jars are shattered, light spills out. Confusion follows. The Midianites turn on themselves. Gideon’s men do not overpower the enemy. They stand firm and watch God do what only God can do.
The pattern is unmistakable. God removes the illusion of control so that His presence becomes undeniable.
That is why the verse written on the Israeli team’s sled feels less like symbolism and more like testimony:
Jacob speaks these words in Genesis after encountering God in a barren, uncertain place while fleeing fear and instability. He did not expect holiness there. He did not prepare for revelation. He simply discovered that God had arrived before he did.
And we know, God does not wait for ideal conditions. He does not require perfect infrastructure. He does not wait on the right terrain. He shows up in borrowed apartments, in damaged equipment, in improvised systems, and in teams that should not exist on paper.
Gideon teaches us that God is not impressed by scale. He is not persuaded by polish. He does not confuse strength with might. He strips away excess until the truth stands on its own.
That truth is stated with piercing clarity by the prophet Zechariah.
This verse leaves no room for self congratulation and no space for illusion. When something stands that should not stand, when victory arrives that should not arrive, when a small team slides forward on ice that was never meant to carry them, God is making Himself known.
