Temple

 December 29, 2020

I was never much of an athlete. Growing up, my friends played baseball; I played the bassoon. That should tell you something! But when I turned 50, the Lord spoke to me. I generally know it’s the Lord speaking when a thought comes into my head that is out of character for me—something I would never come up with on my own. This particular time, it went like this: “Jim, your body is my temple (1 Corinthians 6:19), and I don’t like the shape it’s in.” I checked out an infomercial on TV, and ordered a set of workout VHS tapes (yeah—50 was that long ago!). I lost about 15 pounds, felt better, and later upgraded to DVDs, Linda bought me a Chuck Norris Total Gym, and recently I found a guy on YouTube who went through entire workouts for free, specializing in men over 40. I easily qualified, began doing his workouts, and was pleased to discover that I could keep up with him.

This evening I had a conversation with my friend Chuck, in which we ranged from work to workouts, with most everything in between. I told him about as a thirteen-year-old reading St. Paul’s word to his protege in 1 Timothy4:8–“Bodily exercise profits little, but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now i, and of that which is to come.”

I took that as a word from the Lord to shun physical exercise in favor of spiritual disciplines, which was part of the reason I was no athlete. When God spoke to me about the condition of his temple twenty years ago, I knew I had misread and misunderstood that verse, but didn’t know exactly how. Chuck gave me the answer this evening.

“If exercise is good for our physical bodies, imagine how good godliness is for our souls,” he commented. The lights suddenly came on. Chuck got it right! All those years I had, as my father used to say, “placed the emphAsis on the wrong syLLABle.” Paul wasn’t berating physical exercise; in fact, he occasionally used the sports of the day as examples of spiritual principles. Paul was instead telling us that as good as workouts are for the health our bodies, spiritual workouts are that much more important for the health of our souls.

I am still no athlete. Seventy-plus years have taken their toll on even the minimal athletic ability I once had. Running to catch a fly ball isn’t going to happen, and my whitewater kayaking days are probably over, but at least I now understand what St. Paul was getting at. I’ll workout tomorrow, and when I’m done, I’ll give my soul a workout, too. I want this temple to be a place God is proud to inhabit!