Swimming the Atlantic

“But he who endures to the end shall be saved.” [Matthew 24:13]

The man who holds the most Olympic world records in swimming is Michael Phelps. Nicknamed the “Baltimore Bullet” and the “Flying Fish,” he is the most decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals. Michael is a four-time Olympian and has also won 33 World Champs LCM medals. In fact, in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Phelps won four gold medals and two silver medals, making him the most successful athlete of the Games for the third Olympics in a row! Phelps started the Michael Phelps Foundation to raise awareness on the sport of swimming and also to promote healthier lifestyles.

But one of the greatest triumphs of endurance is held by Benoit Lecomte, who was the first person to swim across the Atlantic Ocean without a kickboard! On July 16, 1998, he set out from Cape Cod with eight wet suits, a snorkel, and some flippers. He was guided across the ocean by three French sailors on a 40-foot sailboat. The boat also suspended a large cage with an electronic force field over Benoit to protect him from sharks. He did, however, still encounter sea turtles, dolphins, and jellyfish. And for five days he was followed by a great white shark!

Lecomte swam six to eight hours a day through 3,736 nautical miles of relentless waves. He stopped for equipment repairs and to rest for one week in the Azores Islands. Seventy-two days after beginning his epic trip he swam ashore, exhausted but heroic, in France. Lecomte is now considering swimming across the Pacific Ocean from Japan to California. What would ever make a man swim across an ocean? Love. When Benoit’s father died of colon cancer in 1992, it spurred him to do something extraordinary to raise awareness and money for cancer research.

The Bible says someone else crossed an ocean of space for the same reason. Paul challenges us to have the same mindset as Christ. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:5-7). Christ participated in an event that took His life. He carried His cause to the limit to save us.