Gym Membership

Today was, hopefully, the beginning of a new pattern of regular exercise at the gym. I have been a member for a little over two years now and I would have to say that my use of the facility has been sporadic. I usually will get into a pattern of going five days a week and then after about a month something will break the pattern. I don't really know why, but there will just be something that makes not going today easier if I didn't go yesterday.

All that being said, I have been there regularly enough to notice a pattern. I have been faithfully working away on the elliptical machine when someone comes in and signs up. You see them over the next month or so and then they disappear. I friend of mine told me that he bought a year membership and only went three times! I hope he got a great workout those times because he certainly paid a high price for them!

Why do we do that sort of thing? We pay for something and then don't get the benefit of it, even joke about avoiding it! If I knew the absolute answer to that I would write a book about it and make enough money to buy the gym. What I can say from my experience is that priority is critical. Just how high on the "To Do" list is working out? For me that translates into what I do first. In fact, I have found that when I determine to go to the gym first thing in the morning I am usually more successful in creating that pattern which all the exercise folks say is so important in improving overall health.

So, let me ask you, would you benefit from working out regularly? That is an important question, but the follow up is perhaps even more so, how high a priority will you set on this? Almost all of us would answer yes to the first question. How you answer the second question will determine if it is worth doing at all.

Organization

I admit it, I have a thing for organization. Someone famously said, "a place for everything, and everything in its place." I have to admit that there is just something about working to get all my books in just the right order, my papers in just the right file, and a large pile of things "weeded out" and assigned to the trash. The other day I had one of those unusual days where no one would expect to see me. It had snowed, a wet, heavy snow. Traffic was at a crawl and I could invoke the "absolution of the snow" to justify my time in the office. I really enjoyed seeing everything "organized."

Now, typically I will do this sort of thing about once a year, and this was a bit early in the year for me to take on the task, but, as I said, the opportunity presented itself. Somewhere in the process it occurred to me that my life is something like my office. There are times that I need organizing. Somethings (maybe priorities?) need to reordered, other things are out of place and need to be put in the right file (read goals or ambitions), and finally some things just need to be chucked!

I have to admit, it is more difficult to organize myself than it is to organize my office. It takes time and typically time without distractions. I had the luxury of a "snow day" for my office. I think wisdom would be to just take a personal organization day, regardless of the weather.

Baptized?

It was early one week day when I got an unusual phone call. A pleasant sounding young lady had an inquiry. She wanted to know if we kept records of baptisms? The answer to that is both yes and no. I know that some churches keep a sort of "accession book" which notes when anyone is baptized or when someone is voted into the church membership. Yes, we have a membership roll, but no, we don't have a book where we just note when someone is baptized.

So far, so good, then she hit me with a follow up question that I had a hard time getting my mind around. "Well, I might have gotten baptized there, but I really don't remember. I was hoping you could clear that up for me." My first thought was that she had a recollection of getting baptized, but was unsure about which church had performed this ordinance. No, she was unsure if she had ever been baptized and thought that if she had, it would have been at the church I serve.

Baptism is supposed to be a symbolic identification with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. If you can forget whether you did that, then do you really understand its significance?

All of this was running in the back of my mind as I assured this young lady that I would look into our records. My hope is that I can find some record of her, or her family, which would give me the hope of making a connection. Perhaps I can point her in the direction of a real relationship with God. She mentioned that she had not really "been in church" since childhood. Who knows, maybe this curiosity of hers was planted by God? I don't know about her past, but I hope there can be a relationship between her and God in the future.