When you’re 50+, if you haven’t already, sooner or later chances are you’ll hear new expressions from the medical profession relating to your body’s decline.
For me it’s my bones, specifically my knees. I have run all my life and love to be jogging on the beach or in the woods or even the mindless pummelling of a treadmill. It went some way to fighting the middle-age spread. However, that activity is severely curtailed following a strenuous workout one weekend when I pushed my legs too far. After hobbling around for a couple of weeks I reluctantly decided that my knees weren’t going to heal anytime soon, so I sought X-rays and an MRI scan. Fortunately the result was no permanent damage, only to my pride as the young doctor diagnosed bone contusions most likely caused by impact damage and “age appropriate degeneration”. Seems my running days may be over?
Although I may have to accept that in the physical sense I won’t accept it in the spiritual sense.
Paul sensed that the Corinthians had become spiritually flabby, wanting all the rewards without the hard work when he wrote to them in 1 Corinthians 9:24-25 ‘Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one gets the prize. Everyone who competes in the race goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last but we do it to get a crown that lasts forever.’
So if I follow Paul’s instruction and use increasing spiritual discipline (particularly in my quiet times) then I, too, will avoid spiritual flabbiness and thereby perhaps be able to talk about age appropriate regeneration.
Image credit: Photo by Phil and Pam / CC BY 4.0
