Stuff!
We are almost to that magical six week mark.
Let me explain. I am a longtime member of a gym here in town. Every January, there is an incredible influx of members. It makes it hard to find a parking place, much less actually get on a treadmill or bike. And forget getting into a class! But as all of us who have been members for a few years know, those “newbies” will generally only last about six weeks. After that, the resolutions begin to fade, the desire to be fit is outweighed by other factors.
In short, parking is going to be a lot easier in a week or two.
Now, while I don’t pull for anyone to be unhealthy, I admit I look forward to the short-timers falling away so that my workouts can run a little faster, a little smoother. Selfish, I know.
But as I was waiting tonight to use the weights, I started thinking. How many other things do we start off like gangbusters, only to quit mere weeks into our venture?
Personally, every January I make a commitment to read the Bible through, cover to cover. I start out on fire. And then… I fade in the backstretch. I will spend the year in fits and starts of reading, until I will finally give up in late summer, vowing to myself that “next year” I will make it through, a fresh start.
Along those same lines, I love the beach. I’ve loved it since I was a child. Immediately after graduating from college, I got a job in Virginia Beach, Va. I got an apartment just a few miles from the beach. This was it, I would be sunning myself on the white sands on a regular basis.
I lived there 12 years. I probably went to the beach about a dozen times. I reasoned that it was going to be there the next day, and I just didn’t have time. Now I live nowhere near the beach and, you guessed it, I want to go. Badly.
All of this points to two facts of our humanness. First, many of us take the easy way out, the lazy way. There is always something else to do that is more exciting that sitting and reading our Bible, or following a Christian study guide.
And second, we always want what is harder to get to, but if it is placed right in front of us it begins to lose it’s luster.
There is an old country song called “Stuff.” My husband loves the line, “It’s a treasure until it’s mine, then it ain’t worth a dime.”
God is with us. He is everywhere, His love envelopes us moment by moment. Yet we often treat it like it is ordinary, not the precious gift that it is. Imagine if we didn’t have His love, His forgiveness. Imagine how we would work to achieve His attention then! Yet because He gives to us so freely, we end up pushing Him to the back burner.
After all, He’ll always be there, so there is no rush, right?
Something to think about…
February 11th, 2009 at 4:17 am
I’ve been reading my Bible, fairly consistently, most days of the week for just over two years now & I’m still in the Old Testament. This really bothered me for a while until I realized (with God’s help, I’m sure) that this is a book that I should be reading every day for the rest of my life, it doesn’t matter that I’m not reading it fast. In fact, I think the slower I take it the better because I have time to really meditate on the message. I feel that “read the Bible in a year” is a dangerous fad that leads many to think once they have done it they can check that off their to-do list & enter some elite class of Christianity, like, “Well, I’ve read the entire Bible, I must now be a pretty good Christian.” Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see anything wrong with doing one of those programs, in fact, I’m in one right now to read through the New Testament in a year but I know for many years those were my thoughts. If I could just get through the entire Bible once then I wouldn’t have to worry about it again.