Wednesday, September 20, 2017

                10,000 steps a day!!! Yikes!!!

                That is what my doctor has recommended to me after my complete physical yesterday – 10,000 steps a day. Who comes up with these ridiculous numbers? Was it some physical fitness nut in a spandex suit who enters marathons just for fun? A civic servant in the Ministry of Health and Welfare chuckling away in her or his office? I bet it was my Grade 9 phys.ed. teacher, Mr. Bell; just the kind of malevolent thing he’d enjoy doing.

                10,000 steps a day. Let’s see. It’s about 2 steps from the couch to my desk. It’s about 5 steps from the couch to the refrigerator. It may take 6 steps to get to the bathroom – from the couch. I sometimes go into the living room to read (I’m tired of the couch) – maybe 8 steps at the most. Once or twice a day I climb the stairs – that’s 14 steps each time, coming and going. Sometimes I have to look for the TV remote; that’s a couple of steps or so. I have to walk to the car a couple of times a day – that’s got to be good for another 15 steps or so both ways. Add in the miscellany steps like grocery store trips and the like.  How am I doing? Hey, look at that; I am about up to 150 or 200 steps on a busy day. Son-of-a-gun; I seem to be just a little bit short.

                10,000 steps a day. Who’s my doctor kidding? I bet you that I would have to walk from here to Lakefield to get in 10,000 steps – a trip of 40 kilometers or so. Apparently, there is an app for my phone which will tell me how many steps I have taken in a day. Yeah; like I need my phone laughing at me.

It has taken a great of time and effort to build this bodily temple to corpulent laziness. It seems a tad irreligious to tear it down with 10,000 steps each and every day.

Sadly, he is probably right about me needing more exercise. Getting more exercise is another thing altogether. “One dies in full prosperity being wholly at ease and secure; his loins full of milk and the marrow of his bones moist…” (Job 21:23) Doesn’t say anything about doing 10,000 steps – sometimes you gotta love proof-texting, although I find "milky loins" just a tad disturbing. Oh, well, as they say, any great journey begins with the first step. I’ll start first thing tomorrow!

The condition of the human body was an important part of Jesus’ holistic ministry as evidenced by the many stories of healings that speak to us throughout the Gospels. Broken and diseased bodies were a chaotic reversal of the goodness of God’s Creation in which God created both male and female in his own image (Genesis 1:26). Conversely the blessings of God’s Reign (i.e. his Kingdom to come) was to help his Creation be restored to its full state of well being.  

Jesus toiled on behalf of that Kingdom as “the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick,” (Luke 5:17). It was a major component of his ministry, and he touched and included in this ministry the poor, foreigners, Roman soldiers, ostracized lepers, women, children, shunned Samaritans and so on. Not surprisingly, it was one of the main attractions that brought the crowds to Jesus – his ability to heal.

We are not talking about TV evangelistic healing theatre. We are pointing to a deeply compassionate, humbly simple, sincere loving touch of the Master so as to reveal the Love of God in every broken body and blinded face and tortured mind and diseased limb. One can stumble over the literal how of history and miss the poetic Love of the Mystery which permeates these healing stories.

I believe that we are given these stories as a sign of hope and possibility, not to abandon doctors and hospitals and treatments, but to dare to trust that God intends for each and every one of us to be whole, to be sound in body and mind, to be loved and to be blessed.  That when disease and illness take us over this is not God’s will of Love for us, but an aberration of God’s gracious living Creation.

Take it one step at a time, my friends; one step at a time.

Dale