Running to Worship?

by Jessica

Jeremy and I have started running. It's great. Really. It's bringing me closer to God because while I run I pray. It goes something like this: "Dear God, make it stop! Help me, I'm dying! Everything hurts; moving, breathing, thinking, my side, my legs, EVERYTHING! HELP ME PLEASE! If I live through this, I promise... to run again tomorrow..."

People do this for fun?! Come on, it's torture. If I were in George Orwell's 1984 my secret deep fear would be having to run for my life or worse, run a marathon. "They" tell me it will get better, gotta keep it up. Well, I'm keeping it up and so far it's still hard but I know that I need to keep going for Jeremy and the girls, they deserve me taking care of myself. So I will keep running.

All this torturous running has had me thinking about worship as a lifestyle. Here is an area where I could use some improvement. I'm hardly worshiping, in fact, I'm always about 2 steps away from cursing up a storm and giving God a piece of my mind on the importance of keeping healthy. Ah yes, my flesh has a thing or two to say about the pain it has to go through. So do you think Paul really meant it when he wrote in Romans 12 "So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life--and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him." That's from The Message, I just love how Peterson puts it, I can't gloss over it quite as easily as I can with the version I memorized: "Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship." (NASV) Do you think Paul could even mean when we're running or doing something else we really hate... dis-like, hate's a bad word in our house. But seriously, God Doesn't expect me to actully worship while I'm out there dying, er, uh, running? What are your thoughts?