Do Something

How old am I? I remember when Nike was the K-Mart of basketball sneakers. I think they were moving out of just making running shoes into other types of athletic foot-ware. Putting away the waffle-maker. B.J. Before Jordan.  Made poorly. Crap. I also didn't much like the dude on the basketball team either who worn them.

Nike's iconic Swoosh and "Just Do It" mantra was branding excellence. This philosophy admonished wearers to leave excuses behind. I have been reminded of this recently in conversations with several other people who mentioned that they have decided that doing something in a positive direction is better than do nothing. For one, it is walking the treadmill daily, for the other it is visiting the climbing gym. So, often we feel as if we have to go hard core before our efforts matter. Both are experiencing a high degree of success by being consistently good rather than occasionally great. Weekend warrior stuff is stupid. Good way to get hurt and discouraged from do anything else fitness-wise until the following weekend.  

I have recently decided to lift weights 20 minutes a morning, with one day off a week. One day, lower body, the next day upper body. So far so good. It has been a week and a day of waking up that 20 minutes earlier a day at 5 rather than 5:20. By the time I fully wake-up, it is almost over. I have tried for years to lift weights after school and I just couldn't surmount the psychological burden of picking up weights after a hard day at work. It seemed like punishment. So, I would drink a cup of coffee to get revved up which then would disrupt my sleep. Not a good idea to drink coffee at 4:00 pm.

How about spiritually? The Bible intimidates us. It is a big book. I have read it straight through twice, a chapter a day. We think if we can't pound out chapters a day that we are failing. God's Word does not return void. Even a little is a lot in God's hand...like the miracle of the bread and the fishes. Prayer is another arena where I have often felt deficient. Somehow, if I don't get up at 4:00 and pray fervently and get calloused knees, my prayers don't have power. Not so. How about the Lord's Prayer? It can be said in less than thirty seconds. There is a reason why Jesus showed us how to pray like this in short stretches. He knows our tendency to get distracted.

Sure, it would be awesome to pray for hours and read thousands of words of the Bible daily. The Devil wants to persuade us that we need to be spiritual superstars rather than just simple saints. Who do what they can rather than what they think they should.            

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shake the Dust: Anis Mojgani

Pslam 90:2 "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." I am not real certain where Anis Mojgani comes from belief-wise. Cats like him tend to be synchrestic spiritually rather than Christ-centered. Yet, this poem captures the spirit of Jesus. What this poem also needs is grace....we shake off sin and mortality and take on Christ and immortality. This is for the fat girls This is for the little brothers For the former prom queen And for the milk crate ball players This is for the school yard wimps And the childhood bullies that tormented them Shake the dust. This is for the benches and the people sitting upon them. This is for the bus drivers driving a million broken hymns And for the men who have to hold down 3 jobs, Simply to hold up their children. For the nighttime schoolers And for the midnight bike riders trying to fly Shake the dust. For the two year olds who cann...
Read more

Thomas Jefferson & Jesus

Image
I was reminded today, by a friend's post on Facebook, that it is Thomas Jefferson's birthday. So, I had a little party on my own of watching two documentaries on him through Netflix Instant. There is much I admire about Jefferson, there is much I dislike. He is polarizing figure. Besides the owning of slaves, the second most odious character flaw was his castration of the New Testament . See my slice of his slicing. Live by the razor, die by the razor. I did learn a cool new word call Amphiboligism which means ambiguity. The arrogance of Jefferson is astounding as if he had a more accurate vantage point of Jesus after 17 centuries than Jesus's own contemporaries and colleagues. In an empirical and scientific sense, he is at a considerable disadvantage in his postulations. When my wife and I visited Monticello on our Honeymoon, the most memorable moment there --besides my downing a can of Pringles all at once (in my own version of the "Pursuit of Happiness" w...
Read more