Sore Muscles

 

My wife warned me, but I wouldn’t listen.  Saturday afternoon, we finally made it home from four days in the hospital.  My wife wanted to sit out on the back deck and soak up the waning sunlight.  I wanted to mow, but the blade engage handle on the riding mower wouldn’t work.  An investigation for another day.  So, I got my trusty grabber and began collecting pinecones in the back yard.  Pinecone collecting never ends.  When I finish, more have dropped, and I must start again.  I strategically place the five-gallon bucket, pinch a cone with my grabber, and flip it into the bucket.  I can get about 35 large cones in a bucket.  It takes about 3 ½ buckets to fill a kitchen trash bag.  But after two bags were filled, my shoulder began to hurt.  I had done too much pinching and flipping with my weak rotator cuff.  The pinecones weren’t that heavy, and the action wasn’t that taxing, but 245 pinches and flips took its toll on unused muscles.  And Kathy was right, the next day, my shoulder would barely move.  Hey, how are your praying knees?  Are they not used very much?  Would they begin to cramp up if you began to use them as much as you should?  Or how about your Bible-reading fingers?  If you were to read your Bible as much as you scroll through the posts on facebook, would your Bible-reading fingers begin to ache?  How about your looking-around-for-friends-at-church neck muscles?  Do you contact absentees when they aren’t in the house of God?  Or does someone have to use their neck muscles to look around to find you?  Are you AWOL at the House of God.  Paul said in I Timothy 4:12, “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.”  Hey, be an example to others.  Use your spiritual muscles.  Don’t let them become flabby from disuse, like my rotator cuff.  Stay spiritually active and stay close to the dear Lord.  Be spiritually fit.  You’ll be glad that you are!