Pre-Existing Conditions

Pre-existing conditions. 

I’ve just renewed my annual travel insurance policy. Because I have a pre-existing medical condition, I spent a half hour on the phone with Anna, answering set questions concerning the condition. At the end of the questionnaire I was given the additional cost of cover for this condition. It nearly doubled the base quotation. 

Humanity has inherited a pre-existing spiritual condition: a sinful nature. We are prone to making unhealthy decisions which sicken our souls. Yet even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. Christ paid the additional cost for our spiritual condition, so that we can be in Him, holy and without fault in his eyes. It cost Jesus his life.

I’m grateful that I can get, and can afford to pay for, the insurance cover so that I can visit my family regularly. I am bowled over, eternally grateful, that Jesus has paid the price so I can live with my heavenly father ... heavenly family ... forever.

That sets my heart singing praises forever. What a Saviour!

Keep up your fluids

Apparently the spine’s health and flexibility depends at least a bit on its being properly lubricated. 

Meaning we should all be drinking plenty of water – 2 litres per day – to keep it in optimum health.

One more thing to try to remember to do. Maybe just after I’ve finished the Pilates routine...

Jesus said that if we go to him and ask him for water he will give us a spring that bubbles up to eternal life, and we’ll never thirst again (spiritually speaking). 

Makes me think that if we don’t drink the water he gives, our spiritual spines will begin to creak and groan and slip disks. We need to rehydrate from Jesus in order to maintain flexible spiritual strength, or we run great risks. 

Spiritual dehydration looks like burn-out. It looks like despair. It looks like apathy, distraction, and loss of faith if it goes on too long. 

I’m not sure how I can measure 2 litres of Jesus water but I guess that sitting in his presence can top it up, and I should know when I feel full up.

Had a good day of filling up today between my own time with Jesus, then church, and then The Well.

Tomorrow, though, is another day!

Engage your Core!

I’m a beginner in my Pilates class, trying to get the hang of the almost imperceptible moves and holds while remembering to keep breathing, shoulders relaxed, and engage my core. 

Engage my core.

Not sure I’ve quite mastered the hang of this yet but it seems that to engage my core is to pull in tight at my belly button and imagine a thread tightening right through to the other side of my body. The purpose of engaging the core is to strengthen it, so that when stresses and strains come my back won’t be weak and a disc give way. 

I’ve started my day right this morning, by engaging my spiritual core. Just standing and resting in God, looking out at the beauty of the autumn, aware of the dashing and darting of birds and the noises of geese migrating. I’ve spoken my love for God to him again, even in song, and read his Word and now I am strengthened to go through the day, whatever it may hold.

It isn’t that I will succeed at crossing off all the bullet points on my To-Do list, but that when the interruptions come, I’ll recognise those which are divinely ordained and go with the flow in joy and peace, trusting that God has my back. Nothing will give way under the strain of the unexpected.

Some people come from dysfunctional families where they have never felt that anyone had their back, and it’s a very lonely and vulnerable place to be. But for us all, God loves us with all his heart and whether or not I put myself in the right place first thing in the morning, He will still have my back. But I won’t have His peace, and without his peace something inside of me may just slip or give way.

The joy of the Lord is your strength. That is the core that I am engaging today, which will see me through the unexpected things that may come my way.

I’m not very good at engaging my physical nor my spiritual core, but I am practicing, and I'm getting better.