DON’T LET CAN’T KEEP YOU FROM CAN

Writing this gives me the opportunity to trumpet about getting the latest Apple Watch as a gift for Christmas. One of its main features is the Fitness app. To try it out, one of my sons-in-law and I took a walk. Our conversation turned to how folks will with great anticipation, eagerness, and a good dose of bluster begin an exercise regime only to soon get discouraged and quit it. One of the reasons they get discouraged is that they have something get them off their exercise schedule, and they never get restarted. Walking is one of the few times I am talkative--not to myself, but on the phone or while walking with someone. I found myself blabbering on about an axiom I formulated to help me stick with something. This is the New Year and the time many begin new commitments to exercise, diet, hobby, renew church/worship involvement, begin spiritual disciplines, etc. I thought I’d share my axiom. It may be of no benefit to anyone else, but through many years it has helped me. Even recently, it assisted my getting back on track with something. It has also kept me on track with many other things. What is it? Simply this: “Don’t let when you can’t keep you from when you can.” People begin, let’s say, an exercise regimen. No, we’ll use that later. Let’s say a diet—though that’s a more dangerous illustration. The prospective dieter researches different diets, visits the grocery store for health items, studies nutrition charts, figures BMI goals, calculates calories to be consumed, cleans out the cupboards and refrigerators of junk food to eliminate temptation, makes a daily menu, etc. With the new year’s commencement, he begins and sticks with his dieting—consistently, every day. Then, his workplace has a banquet in conjunction with a required meeting. The dieter can’t very well bring his own lunch and sit there munching on spinach leaves and tofu noodles. How inconvenient and rude. So, he blows his diet on barbeque and cheesecake—and much more. Dieting has made him hungry. He consumes in one sitting a colossal number of calories, three days’ worth. The next morning, he is so discouraged over having blown his diet, he jettisons it and goes to the restaurant for a breakfast of biscuits and gravy and a tower of pancakes slathered with butter and drenched in syrup. Simply, he let the discouragement from when he couldn’t very well stick with his diet prevent him from keeping it the next day when he very well could. Five days a week I take a walk. If there is a stretch of consecutive days when it rains too hard to venture out for a walk, it is very difficult to go walking the day following the rainy ones. Sometimes a pastoral duty precludes my being able to walk that day. The next day it is much harder to take the walk. But I tell myself, “Don’t let when you can’t keep you from when you can.” I walk. This is true about so many things. You may renew a commitment to daily prayer and Bible reading before you go to work each day. Then there is a series of days when you miss that devotional time: One day the alarm doesn’t go off and, when you finally wake up, you have time only to make a mad rush for work. The day following you awaken with strep throat and can’t even get out of bed. Not for three days. Your daily schedule is blown. Along with your private devotions. Finally, you are well and back to a daily routine. Except for the devotions. You would begin them again, but it is so hard after not having done them in so long. Make no mistake; this is why so many have not returned to in-person worship at church after COVID shutdowns or illness. There was a time when they couldn’t come. That got them in the habit of not coming. It introduced them to the convenience of not going through the hassle of grooming and dressing and commuting to a place of worship. So, when they were recovered and/or the doors of the Church were thrown back wide open, they stayed at home. They let the times when they couldn’t attend keep them from the time that they could. If these would only say, “I won’t let when I can’t keep me from when I can.” I will not even bring up how many deem something a “can’t” when it is simply an “I-don’t-want-to.” Except, I just did. I almost didn’t write this weekly blog. I got knocked off schedule with the holidays and missed last week. I felt so unlike writing anything today that I was about to shut my computer and just skip this week. Then I heard a voice in my head say, “But you CAN write one today if you only would.” And that’s when I heard my axiom echo through my unwilling, uninspired head, “Don’t let when you can’t keep you from when you can.” So, I blogged this, “Don’t let when you can’t keep you from when you can.” I confess that was an easy way out. --Pastor Clifford Hurst