Certain stories

The athlete, TOMMIE SMITH, won the gold medal in the 200m event, on 16th October 1968, in the Mexico Olympic Games.

In the medals ceremony, he and the winner of the bronze medal, JOHN CARLOS, both raised their fists in black gloves and bowed their heads while the USA national anthem was playing. It was their way of drawing attention to what was happening to black people.

Martin Luther King had been murdered on 4th April 1968, and they wanted black people to have the same rights as white people. That was what led them to carry out their protest.

They were not treated as heroes, rather the contrary. Their dream became a nightmare, and in spite of having several world records they nearly couldn't run again as a consequence of that gesture.

They were expelled from the team and thrown out of the Olympic Village. Dense, Tommie's wife, divorced him, and he had to find work washing cars.

Ten years later a university college in Santa Monica hired him as coach, so he was able to return to normal life.

That gesture destroyed Tommie's life, but it certainly brought attention to the racial problem that existed in many places in the world.

A few years later, the great black tennis player ARTHUR ASHE, infected by AIDS through a blood transfusion, said: 'It is very painful to know that I have this horrible disease, but much more painful is the rejection that I've borne all my life because of the colour of my skin.'

Many people have suffered scorn and discrimination, just for not being white, for living in a different culture, or for being different in some other way.

It's difficult to recognise that all of us have the same value to God, and nobody has any right to feel superior.

We often feed hatred and reject others because they're not like us.

We are unable to learn to love the differences between people, and to understand that God was very wise when he created each one unique. We should NEVER despise other people.

When the Bible wants to explain what the church is, it uses the symbol of a body. And it tells us that no part of that body is more important than the rest.

God has made each of us in such a way that what we are and what we do completes the body itself. There are no differences in importance.

The body is in harmony when we all are in our place, when we all love each other, when we all recognise that no other person is more or less important than we are.