LEAD August 2024 | Page 58

to the tired .
Tired can be a gift , friends . But many of us are living like we ’ re still in our twenties and like I ran in that race : we press through tired . We ignore it . We charge through the limit it imposes on us .
God encased us in flesh . He gave us wrinkles and gray hair and the need for sleep and sunshine and water and bathrooms . Is it too much to consider that He uses our bodies to reach us , telling us when to pause , to slow , or to sleep ?
“ Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit , who is in you , whom you have received from God ? You are not your own ” ( 1 Cor . 6:19 ).
We all would agree God cares about this
temple , this holding place for Him , but He also uses it to teach us , to reach us .
So many of us run our Christian race like I ran that four-miler all those years ago : eyes on the splits , convinced that we know the goal , idealized against hearing and receiving God ’ s gentle , persistent warnings to realign us toward His way .
We press on , but not in the way Paul intended when he said , “ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus ” ( Phil . 3:14 ESV ). We press through , ignoring the way God made us to achieve a prize that , though we use language as if it ’ s in the name of God , often just makes us feel better about ourselves .
Perhaps we ’ ve not seen or named this struggle with our limits . Maybe we ’ ve not
58