It’s all about love… Love God and love one another. It’s so simple, but it can be so hard. Those of us who live lives that demand little physical activity may be able to see the challenge of living out these simple commands in a new light today by thinking about our common responses to the simple advice to exercise every day. Exercise 30-60 minutes a day. It is simple and straightforward – just like the commands to love. Yet, we can so easily miss the mark. Experts often tell us that we don’t even have to do all of the exercise at once. We can work in 10 minutes here and 15 minutes there. We know that physical activity is important, but it slides so easily when other demands hit. We think that we’ll catch an hour somewhere in the day. When we have 15-20 minutes, we decide that that is not enough time to exercise. We decide that we’ll just wait for another window or another day. So opportunities to be physically active come and go. If we stop to reflect we might even see that we have structured our lives to avoid physical activity. Do we fear something more than poor health that leads us to make these choices? Perhaps we fear failure, disapproval, or lack of productivity. Perhaps we feel awkward because we are out of practice. Contrast these typical patterns of inactivity with the choices of those who live active lifestyles. If you know someone who has an active lifestyle, think about how he or she frequently makes choices that differ from the choices of others. In the psalm for today we ask God to teach us His ways. Clearly, His ways are the ways of love. As we pray the psalm today we can ask God to open our eyes and heart to a new commitment to live a loving lifestyle. Perhaps we can catch ourselves today when we are about to make a choice that caters to some fear other than the fear of missing opportunities to love. Perhaps we can catch ourselves when we are about to pass off an opportunity to do something loving because it’s such a busy day. We can pray today for the grace to choose love in large and small opportunities. We can work, with God’s grace, to begin to set new patterns and habits. We may then become people who consistently make choices that are different than others around us. We may then become people who live up to the lyric that “they will know that we are Christians by our love.” |