Your own body and health
If like me, you are well into the second half of your life (I know…I’m actually into the last 1/3) then almost certainly you can look back to times when you were fitter, stronger, faster. Sue always jokes that whenever she asks me now how long a job will take she doubles the time that I say since I am still calculating on the basis of how long it used to take! Joking aside, it is so easy to not truly value your body and the health that you actually have right now. And that is true whatever your age, whatever the state of your health.
Certainly when they start warning us that this virus is a greater threat to those with certain pre-existing conditions and those over a certain age then we become very aware of whether or not we fall into those camps.
I remember a few years back doing a school assembly on the last chapter of Ecclesiastes getting the children to identify the metaphors that the writer uses to describe old age: the darkened sky (dimming eye-sight), keepers of the house tremble (bones shaking), grinders cease (teeth lost or powerless), doors to the street shut (lips closed when eating lest the food fall out) and so on and so on. The children really loved it for it paints such a true and powerful image.
And yet despite all of its disappointments, and your frustrations, your body is “fearfully and wonderfully made” and despite all the restrictions being imposed on us at the current time, it still serves us faithfully.
In the middle of Psalm 139 the psalmist declares:
Psa 139:13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
Psa 139:14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
Psa 139:15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Psa 139:16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
Friend, are you taking care of your God-given body and ensuring that it gets both the rest, the right foods, and the exercise that it needs, that God designed it to work well on?
God has designed it to work in both the good and in the bad times, at rest and at work, in sickness and in health. How much do you value your body today? And how often do you truly thank God for it – frustrations and all?