Theological Fun

It occurs to me that so far, this blog has covered pretty much the gym and books. Oh well, that is pretty much life at the moment. I’ve been going to the gym 6 times a week for the last three weeks, and today was the first day that I really and truly did not want to go. The day had started at seven unloading a semi-trailer, and I had spent the next ten hours unloading, pricing, and putting up my order, while serving endless demanding customers. It was a long day. Weight lifting was not something that particularly appealed.

But then it occurred to me. This time three years ago, I was never sure if I would be able to walk 30 yards without help let alone run for 45 minutes. Don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful for all those men and women who helped me walk, carried my bags, packed me up and sent me home, helped edit my papers when I was completely brain dead, and brought me meals, but I am even more grateful for whatever God has done in the last few years so that now, I am able to work a 10 hour day and then go lift a ridiculous amount of weights.

I’m not often convicted my reading C.S. Lewis. Interested, expanded, and invigorated yes, but not convicted. But the other day I was reading The Problem of Pain and something stood out to me. Lewis says that most people think of life as a long walk to get to a place where there is no suffering, where life is easy, comfortable, and peaceful. But Lewis says that life is not like this. God, in his mercy does not, in general, give us a place where life is comfortable and peaceful—if it was, we would have no need of him. We would never grow. We would never catch a glimpse of what he does want for us. He brings us suffering because we are his children, and as proper children, he has a great interest in bettering us whether we like it or not. But, Lewis says, God, in his mercy does not give us ease. But God, in his mercy, does sprinkle a hard path with an enormous amount of….I realize this is not a theological word, but fun. He gives us incidence of fun, exuberance, delight. He doesn’t need to give us these glorious respites, but he delights to. It is only up to us to recognize and revel in these gifts. Reading this, I realized that I keep forgetting to spot the good. There is a lot of work. There is a lot of stress. There is even a lot of pain and sorrow. But God is doing a lot to send me friends, laughter, joy, and hope, and I am too often blind to it. But, in an attempt to tie these two topics together…the ability to work, and to work out, is a gift of God that I much too often forget to revel in, yet it is a constant and potent gift.