Good morning, and a belated Happy President's Day!
I was recently reading a commentary on Hebrews, about running the race set before us, and this really struck me:
“A Race that All must Run.
Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
Life is a race: an individual effort, not a fatality. Every man is what his life is; and his life is just how he has run his race. The road is his; the opportunity is his; the means and appliances are his; and if he fails, the fault is his. To all alike God gives the race, and gives to each the properties for success. Men are differently constituted and gifted, but all have gifts and talents committed to them whereby to run the race of life. To be humble as this world goes is no test of the capacities with which a man is qualified for running the race.
The coarsest reed that trembles in the marsh, if Heaven select it for its instrument, may shed celestial music on the breeze as clearly as the pipe of virgin gold.
What do we see in a race? Muscles strained; veins like whipcords; beaded perspiration; strenuous, intense, earnest speed. The reality in the mental and spiritual man corresponding to these symbols in the physical man—that is our aim. The figure of the Olympian athlete means a life in earnest or it means nothing. Useful service in life, or duty well done—that is our goal. Temptation met and resisted and conquered—that is our goal. Power to love, to be just, to be pure, to be true, to control external life and internal life—that is our goal. Honest success in the vocation of life which we follow—that is our goal.
The success of the Christian lawyer, of the Christian business man, of the Christian artificer, of the Christian scholar, is just so much power added to the personality which he consecrates to the cause of God and to the uplifting of humanity in the world. We should therefore look upon success in our daily vocation as a duty which we owe to God and man.
We should push our business or our study, or our practice, or our manual toil until it has become a success. To reach success in every case will take hard work; but to do hard and healthful work is the purpose of God in bringing us into the world. Hard work has always been the condition of success in all the departments of life.
No man ever became a Bunsen or a Faraday in the laboratory apart from endless experimenting with chemicals. No man or woman ever went up the way of the violin, or the way of the piano, or the way of the organ, or the way of the orchestra, except by labour. The Beethovens, the Mendelssohns, the Mozarts, the Haydns, and the Handels, who cheer human life with their sweetness of music, were all incarnated energy and ambition and push.”
We seldom want to exercise, It is hard to get motivated and we're all BUSY. The point is, you have to schedule your exercise or it isn't going to happen consistently! We have a prize waiting for us at the end: a body that functions better, lungs that get more oxygen, muscles that support us better, a heart that pumps better and cells that are nourished and flushed.
Today's Bible verse:
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”
-Noel