Reality

This past week my family experienced a tornado in my home town of Springfield, MA. As well as other people have all across the country. What I find interesting in y life is that my compassion has been numb to others except for the "that is horrible" statement. But when something like this hits home all of the sudden I feel as though I should go and help and be there. I know there is a personal connection and that always makes your compassion run deeper. But should it be that way? Should I feel the same compassion for others as I do for my hometown? Or has my life become numb to other things because I see so much destruction, hurt, and pain in the world that it is normal now? Is this a good place to be? I know I can't help everyone but we can pray for them, support them in other ways which I did not. Have we as Christians grown numb to what goes on around us? I feel in my life the reality is that I have grown numb unless it effects me personally. I don't think that is good or what Jesus has called me to be or feel. I think I need to look into my heart and my reality and see what has gotten me to this place.

Physical/Spiritual health

I started running this week for the first time in a long time. I bike and kayak but I loath running but there is nothing like a good run. You sweat, get your heart rate up, and you feel good after (minus some soreness). After I ran today I realized this same process is true in our spiritual life and how interconnected our physical life and our spiritual life are. For instance you run, get in shape, usually eat better and your body feels better. In your spiritual life you read the word, pray, fellowship, worship, meditate, fast and your spiritual life "feels better." But when I am not working out my physical life I feel drained, tired, I overeat, get lazy, moody and the list could go on. When I don't work out my spiritual life I get the same way. I am spiritually tired, short, impatient, live in sin and this list could go on as well. How interconnected our physical and spiritual lives are.  I think for so many of us we do not realize how being healthy both physically and spiritually not only gives us a personal sense of accomplishment but also a sense that we are drawing close to the Lord. I have had crohns disease for about 12 years and I have not been the best steward of taking care of it but now that I am realizing the spiritual ramifications and the physical ones that my disease has it becomes more serious to me. I think for so many of us the first thing we let go of is our either our spiritual health or our physical health because we can control them. But the realization is when we let these things go we change as a person both in the physical sense and the spiritual or emotional sense. I think that we often forget that we are not just to maintain our spiritual health but also our physical health. And I realize that there are stresses in our world and we all have crazy out of control schedules and often causes us to stress eat, or overeat or not eat healthy. And this same life also causes us to run our lives as if everyone else controls it except God and our families. Think about it when yo ask someone how things are going 9 times out of ten they will say they are so busy. And this business leads to physical and spiritual "disease." Most of us know this but we do nothing about it. As I have been learning this in my own life I realize how unhealthy I have gotten spiritually and physically and as I journey through the process of getting healthy in these areas I realize that they go hand in hand. I think that we would all do well to reclaim God's time in our life and in our families lives. We would all do well to reclaim our spiritual and physical health. We would all do well to reclaim God's time instead of giving it to everyone else. Because after all our bodies our his not ours. And time is His so let us figure out how to give it back to Him and not to everyone and everything under the sun. To reclaim it and give it to Him and our families.