My asparagus is going wild.  It grows two inches overnight.  I pick it every evening and every morning and am giving it away as fast as I can.  But my tomatoes are just sitting there doing nothing.  They haven't even grown a new leaf.  Both are alive.  But they are alive differently.  One is growing, the other isn't.  One is getting somewhere, the other isn't.  One is bearing fruit, the other isn't.

That is what I was trying to say last Friday about sitting and soaking in the pews.  Or not even going to church at all.  Unless we are growing, God can't do much with us.  I told you that you want to make friends with God before the last minute.  You can't catch up when you neglect your spiritual muscles.

Last week my daughter called and told me, "Mom, you had a perfect example of trying to 'catch up' and you didn't even use it in your blog.  You have spent the last two years neglecting yourself while you took care of Dad.  You used to swim every day, but you quit when he was so ill.  And you lost your muscle strength.  Now, since he is gone you are going back to exercise classes and you are finding that is is hard and discouraging.  It takes a lot of time to catch up."

She is right.  I can't tell that I have accomplished anything in my exercise class these last five months.  But when I went to visit her, she could tell the difference.   She said, "Look at you, you aren't wobbly.  You are walking  so much better.   You've got your balance back."

Spiritual muscles are the same way.  You gain ground slowly over time.  You don't even know you are changing.  But you are.  Reading God's word flexes your spirit.  Your spirit grows.  It gets stronger.

I hate to exercise.  But  I have a goal and I am trying to reach it.  The hard part is not giving up on it.  I have been reading the Psalms and when I got to Psalms 22. 14-15a, it rang a bell.  Even David got tired and lost his strength.  "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint:  my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my body.  My strength is dried up like a pot shard, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws…"  That describes it perfectly.  I let myself physically get out of shape.

Don't let yourself get Spiritually out of shape.