Associate Pastor Neil Dunnavant's Clergy Corner column also appears in our printed newsletter, FPC News.
Senior Pastor Sid Batts' morning radio messages, Just a Thought, also are available via e-mail subscription. Subscribe here.
Lately I have been reading Running with the Legends: Training and Racing Insights from 21 Great Runners by Michael Sandrock. Even back in the '60s and '70s when elite runners and Olympic champions couldn't really make any money, they were still training very hard and doing whatever they could to survive. Frank Shorter lived in an old rusty trailer outside of Gainesville, Fla., attended law school, and was very poor. Lasse Viren and Kip Keino worked as police officers and yet often trained three times a day. Viren would pinch his pennies and go live in Kenya or Brazil at high altitude for a month to train hard and run close to 200 miles a week.
For elite runners, the goal is to push the body right to the breaking point, ease off, and then let the body recover and get even stronger. The trick, of course, is to know just how hard to push without injuring yourself. It has occurred to me as I have been reading about all these famous runners that the spiritual life or the life of a disciple of Jesus is very similar. The more difficult and challenging experiences we have, the stronger we get and the better we are able to deal with the really hard parts of our lives. But like an athlete, without rest (or what athletes call recovery), we injure ourselves and end up losing ground and making no progress.
Perhaps the wisdom comes in knowing how intensely to engage at full force (like a runner training for an Olympic event) and then when to stop and rest and recover and reflect before facing life's difficulties all over again. My experience tells me that this delicate balance of push and retreat takes a life to master, if one can ever really master anything when it comes to life. As we all have figured out by now, we can't really exactly plan our lives. We can try, but well, we know what happens.
They say that if you want to make God laugh, tell God about your plans...
P.S.: Best wishes to Associate Pastor for Discipleship, Rev. Dolly Campbell Hunt, and Bill Jacobs, who recently announced their engagement. The two intend to marry in May.
