Fit for living.

As far as possible spiritual fitness and physical fitness should go hand in hand. Focusing on those two things is a sabbatical intention. So getting the right exercise, eating the right things and staying in the right weight range are good objectives. Sarah and I are signed up to Weight Watchers. Her focus is keeping me focused. She lets me get away with nothing! Her body is now so re-educated that a hotel full English breakfast made her very sick last weekend. Fat rejection!
In projectile mode! She has lost 18lbs and is 3lbs from her goal weight. An inspiration.

My Dad died this year just before his 90th birthday. He had a strong heart and a keen mind to the end. From his mid eighties his mobility diminished. His life became so confined it was no longer truly living. I hated seeing him shuffling painfully towards death. He hated it too. He finally quit in favour of heaven because he had had enough. I've thought lately of the coiled spring of energy that he used to be. He was a Sales Director and Pastor travelling 1000 miles per week. He got home Friday evenings to lead a Bible study, pastoral work Saturday and preaching twice on Sunday then back on the road on Monday. He relished every busy moment. Unable to stand on his own two feet was not the end he wanted.

"As my days so shall my strength be" is a Bible verse that I have always known though I can't remember the reference. It suggests the gift of strength coinciding with the gift of life. Strength to live fully until life is fully lived. It's a worthy objective; a noble ambition and a prayer. My prayer. No one knows what life will dish up. But we must do all that we can to live with energy and enthusiasm to the end.

Nikos Kanzantzakis speaks of his spiritual quest in his book 'Report to Greco.' In the early chapters he wrote of his Father "The Captain" who was a towering figure of a man who worked and fought tirelessly for the freedom of Crete. Years later when visiting Mount Athos he met a monk who had known his Father as a young man, "How is he now?" enquired the monk. "He just sits in the corner sorrowfully and silently waiting to die," replied Nikos. The monk was horrified, he said, "such a man should not die like that. The mountain should quiver from the impact of his fall whilst still reverberating from the pressure of his footprints."

Not an end that limps but leaps. Strength and days woven together. No guarantees but a good goal to aim at.