Exercise

I will take nothing other than my soul with me into Eternal Life.

Blessed Virgin Mary (Stained Glass)

I have spent a little time over the last few months exercising.  This is not to say that I am terribly fit and healthy, but it is to say that I thought to myself that it might be nice to start a regime of exercising so that I can build some strength and get myself into a position where I feel fit and healthy and physically strong and capable.

Because I have spent some time thinking about my physical fitness (or lack of it) I have spent some time reflecting on the discomfort I have experienced on this journey.  After all, when a person like me – who lives a largely sedentary life – begins to exercise it usually means that we are able to push ourselves to a point where we are able to build muscle and strength which means that we feel sore the next day.

I have discovered that the reason for that pain is that in order for our muscles to grow we need to allow our muscles to experience trauma – just a little bit – they need to have little tears, and those little tears are the thing inside our muscles that allow the muscles to rebuild.  Without those little tears (which cause us so much pain of pulled muscles after we exercise) our muscles could not rebuild stronger than they previously were.

And I have been thinking about that, because there is no shortcut to that strength building.  If I do three massive sessions of exercise each day, I do not speed up my progress.  In fact, I could cause myself to over-work my muscles and this could cause its own problems.  After all, if I experience muscle fatigue, I can cause more damage to my muscles than good.  And if I damage them, I might impede my further progress with exercise.

And I have been thinking about that today because it reminds me of sacrifice.

When I die, I will take nothing with me.  I will have to give away everything that I have.  And this includes my clothes, my money, my assets, my power and even the skin around my body and the organs inside it.

And that would be like exercising three times a day.  It would take – literally – everything that I have left to get that done.  And today, it occurs to me that unless I get used to giving a few things away – a little bit at a time – then I will never get used to giving more.  And eventually my God is going to ask me to leave everything behind – all my work and my things and my memories.  And I will take nothing other than my soul with me into Eternal Life.

And when I think about that today I am overcome.  For my God does great things for me to protect me and prepare me.  And I guess that is what I should be doing during this Holy week…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.