Saturday, June 26, 2010

What I’m Reading Today: 1 Timothy 4-5

I’ve made a sort of progression in my life when it comes to living in places that have a degree of health consciousness. I started my life living in Eastern Washington – a place where a breakfast of eggs and bacon was seen as normal and people described their dietary preferences with the phrase “meat and potatoes”. Next, I moved on to Colorado where people were much more physically active and conscious of what they ate. Finally, I in Southern California – a place where you drive for miles in some directions without running into a carbohydrate and physical health and beauty is at a premium. What a journey it has been!

At each stop, I’ve always remember the wise words of my mom when she reflected on one’s health. When it comes to maintaining your health, she said: “You get out of it, what you put into it.”

By that she meant there was a sort of natural accountability built into the process of getting/remaining healthy. If I wanted to control my weight, for instance, I would have to control what I ate. If I wanted more energy, I would need to find time to exercise and be physically active. That intimate relationship between what one invests and what one takes away from something has stayed with me in a variety of areas in life.

The author of 1 Timothy picks up on this very theme when he wrote: “Exercise daily in God – no spiritual flabbiness, please! Workouts in the gymnasium are useful, but a disciplined life in God is far more so, making you fit both today and forever.”

A person certainly wouldn’t expect to be physically fit if she or he worked out for an hour once or twice a month. Likewise, a person probably wouldn’t be spiritually fit if they simply put in an hour at worship once or twice a month. The key to a spiritually satisfying life is to find ways to “workout” on a daily basis.

That spiritual workout can be done in a variety of ways: through prayer, through devotion/reading, through meditation, through worship/celebration, through service … the list of things with spiritual dimensions is nearly endless. The point, however, is that those activities should be regularly engaged if you want to see meaningful results.

Today I would ask you to consider the following question: “How regular and broad-based is your ‘workout’ routine?”

Til next time…