Weight Lifters

Weight Lifters

By Pastor Jim May

One of the characteristics of the church of today that I find is so prevalent is that we seem to never get enough rest. It’s a rat race world that we live in, and every day that we live we wake up to world that is on the move. It seems that the more we work and the faster we go, the more we fall behind in the race and there is always more to do when the day is done than when we started out in the morning. It’s as though the weight of the whole world was placed squarely on your shoulders and if it you stop for even a moment, your whole world will come crashing down around you.

I’m not a weight lifter like my son. He can probably bench press a lot more than his own body weight. The only bench pressing I do is when I sit on it and press it harder to the floor. I get a lot of exercise throughout the day though, just like most of you.

All day long I find myself jumping to conclusions, making a leap of faith. walking on the wrong side, drawing up sides, running off at the mouth, jumping the gun, carrying a grudge, throwing a fit, stretching the truth and tossing caution to the winds. It’s no wonder that I’m worn out by the end of the day.

We walk out the door to chase the dream of reaching a place in life where we can just relax a little and enjoy life because the bills are paid and our family’s needs are met. But somehow, along the way, at least for me, those bills never seem to go away. No matter how hard we work, or how much we try, it seems that we are caught in a cage, like a hamster just running for all he is worth, but never getting anywhere.

I am reminded of the story of once heard that comes from the Plains of the Serengeti of Africa.

Every morning when the first light of the sun breaks forth over the plains, the antelope awakens to a harsh reality. From the moment that antelope is born until the day that its life ends there is one hard fast rule that he must always remember. He knows that he must be fastest and strongest antelope of the herd or else he could well become the next meal for the lions.

On the other side of that story there is the lion. Every morning when the first light of day begins to glow upon the plains, the lion awakes to his own harsh reality. Every lion is born with the need to hunt and kill to survive and his favorite prey is the antelope. He knows that he must be fastest and strongest of the pride if he is going to catch an antelope so that he may be filled and lived to hunt another day.

The lives of the antelope and the lion aren’t much different from yours and mine are they?

Every day that I wake up, I know that I must run this race of life as fast as I can, or I will be left behind and relegated to the place of irrelevance in the minds of men. If I am unable to keep up the pace, or if I stop to rest for too long, the world will go on and I will be left behind and cast aside just like an old shoe that no one wants anymore.

There are a lot of people who woke up this morning feeling like something was missing from their lives. For many of them, it was the fact that they have no means of income. No job is waiting, hope is fading and they feel like the world has forgotten them. They are left sitting in the dust while the world creates a cloud of dust as it passes them by.

The fact is that most people don’t feel like they are fulfilled unless they have a job so that they create some sort of meaning to their lives.

That’s not all bad because God designed us that way to an extent. He created us with an inward desire to build, to grow and to accomplish things in life.

Genesis 1:27-28, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

The Bible also teaches us that we are not to be lazy, and that we are to keep on working to do what God has said and replenish the earth and subdue it.