Hello, my beautiful Bermuda island family. It is Cup Match weekend, and I pray everyone is having fun safely and responsibly.

We are in our most competitive season of the year (Somerset all day!). The world is also in its most competitive season, the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Watching many athletes worldwide (including ours) compete in diverse athletic sports and spaces for gold, silver, or bronze. As well as seeing my island home decorate themselves in the colours of the team they are loyal to, and both Cup Match teams prepare for the match of the year, I couldn’t help but think about the verses in 1 Corinthians 9:23-27 and the concept of identity.

So, in true Chelsea fashion, I am sharing a devotional thought with you this weekend to encourage us to examine where we place our identity and why we do what we do.

I was watching a Netflix documentary recently about Simone Biles, and she was discussing the depression she experienced after her first Olympics at the age of 19 when she won her first set of Olympic gold medals.

She said: “I achieved the ultimate goal at 19; what am I supposed to do next?”

Well, we know she has continued to change the sport of gymnastics since then, but that question and that real moment for her stuck in my mind.

From a very young age, we are asked what we want to do growing up. As adults, one of the first questions asked when we meet someone new and try to make small talk is what do you do for a living?

Many people spend 35 to 40 hours a week, about 1,680 hours a year, at our places of work. Elite athletes dedicate way more hours to their sports training to be the best.

With so much emphasis and time spent on what we do, it is easy to place our identity and worth in what we do, what we achieve, and what society has deemed a success.

Many people put their identity in their roles in life, such as being a mother, father, husband, wife, CEO, etc. The reality is (as we experienced with Covid-19 and other sudden life changes/events) that those things can change instantly due to circumstances out of our control. When we place our identity in places that are subject to change, our value, worth and identity, it is vulnerable.

In my experience, the only place I have found consistency in peace, joy, and understanding of who I am and my purpose has been in the belief in whom Jesus Christ is, what He accomplished on my behalf, and what He says about me in His word. Peter declares in 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”

This transformative love, peace, joy, and understanding of identity are available to all who believe, as Paul states in Ephesians 2:8-10: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

This brings me back to the verse I mentioned at the beginning of this devotional thought, 1 Corinthians 9:23-27: “I do it all for the sake of the Gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.

“Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”

I believe God has created each and every one of us with our unique personalities, gifts, and talents, giving us the ability to discover, explore, train, fine-tune and excel in our gifts and talents.

When our identity is in the One who created us uniquely, we can experience the freedom to try, succeed, fail, and try again without our value and worth being tied to the experience or the outcome.

And in any area, sport, job, etc, we can choose to love one another and be the light and love in these spaces, glorifying God in how we treat each other.

With that said, as St George’s try another year to reclaim victory and the Cup, and Somerset compete to remain victorious, no matter which team you are for in Christ, we are all victorious as we start where He finished, in victory, as described in 1 Corinthians 15:57: “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

With love and blessings,

Chelsea Crockwell