Yesterday I went for a run. It was so great, and this week has been so great. I went home early from work, I've actually gotten a substantial amount of sleep, so I'm not feeling ridiculously tired -it's quite glorious actually. But back to my run - I went to Antrim park, which is a little park in Columbus that is attached to the Olentangy trail, which is a paved path that runs through Columbus along the river, and people run, walk, and bike down it. Antrim is one of my favorite parks to run at because there's a pond with a stone path around it, and I love running around the pond, the path is much softer than pavement so it always feels good to run there. Going into my run yesterday I had the intention of running 3 miles. One loop around the pond is 1.2 miles, so I did that and then I started down the trail. As I was running down the trail I took in my surroundings, and this part runs right along 315, which is one of the freeways in Columbus - so on one side of me I had the busy noisy freeway, with cars zipping by rushing from point A to point B. On the other side of me was the woods. The quiet, beautiful, peaceful, blissful woods. And I was right in the middle of it all. As I looked at this, I realized how we have a choice in our lives. We can choose a simple life, a quiet life, a peaceful life, or we can choose the chaotic life, where we don't have enough time to take care of our bodies.
There is of course a balance between the too. We should fill our lives with good things: school, homework, mass, good friends, prayer, exercise, healthful diets and cooking our meals, but we should not fill our lives so full that we cannot afford to get enough sleep, to take a breath every now and then and just be.
Something the Lord is often teaching me is the importance of just being. If we never take time to just be, we simply do, and do and do and do and go go go. And when we do and go, we get burnt out. We run out of energy. This is not what we want. We want to be able to consistently serve the Lord well, and ensure that our lives always always always bring glory to his name.
So I ask you - which way of life do you choose? one of simplicity, or one of chaos? Will you choose to just be or will you always do?
Remember, if we do not care for ourselves, and our bodies God cannot use us to our fullest potential.
This is an excellent post! I choose a simple life. It is amazing where the Lord can take you when you live with all those key aspects you mentioned above. Thank you for this! God bless. :)
ReplyDelete