A few weeks ago, Kathy and I spent a couple of days on the farm helping to thin out some wooded areas.  We had some “hired help” running power saws and cutting up trees so they could be handled.  Then came the backbreaking work of loading all those logs and limbs onto a trailer, and unloading into a gully.  Some of the larger pieces were placed into the front end loader on the tractor.  Now that’s the way to haul stuff.  You still have to load it by hand, but dumping it is simply a matter of pulling one lever.  Sweet!  However, much of it had to be moved on and off the trailer.  By the end of our two-day job, I could barely move.  The process had been good for my soul, but hard on my body.   Once back at home I went to the gym, which I frequent several times a week, hoping to work out some of the soreness.  I was commenting that after a year of working out, I thought I would be in better shape.  One of the trainers piped in that “gym fit” and “work fit” are two different things.  I had never really thought about it, but I suppose if I truly want to be fit, I need the gym and the farm.  I need the discipline of the gym and the demands of the farm to put my conditioning into practice.  Likewise we could also conclude that there is a difference between being “church fit” and “life fit”.  Flexing your spiritual muscles in church is one thing, but putting them to work out in the real world is quite another.

“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?  Can such faith save him? – Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”                                          

James 2:14, 18

Sore but wiser,
[