Several years ago, the heel of my right foot became so swollen and sore I could hardly walk, and if I banged it against anything I nearly lost my lunch. So I needed what the podiatrist called a retrocalcanealexostectomy. In plain English, they detached the Achilles tendon, removed a wad of extraneous tissue that my body had created to try to pillow the pain, sawed off the back of my heel, which had calcified into a walnut-sized knob, then reattached the tendon with what amounted to a “hollow wall anchor.” It was nearly a year before I walked normally.
When they took the cast off the right leg, the difference in the calf muscles was amazing. Crutches for two months followed by a cane for another two or three, means no exercise, and no exercise equals atrophy. The right calf was half the size of the left, and totally limp. For the next four years that did not matter too much; I still had a good left leg. Then the left foot did the same thing and here we go again—more surgery.
Now I had two wimpy calf muscles. Guess what you need when you try to reach something on the top shelf and need to stand on your toes? Guess what it feels like when you try to do that automatically, without thinking, with those sore heels and limp calf muscles? Yeow!
So for the next few months I worked on getting those muscles back into shape. The first time I tried toe raises, nothing happened! I concentrated hard and told myself to stand on tiptoe, and still nothing happened! So I found some exercises that I could do without trying to stand on my toes, that still made my calf muscles ache and burn. In a few weeks I actually went up about a half inch off the floor. Kind of hard to tell with your eyes a little over five feet higher than your feet, but I am pretty sure, based on what I could and could not reach on the top shelf. Progress! It wasn’t long till I could tiptoe through the tulips—if we had tulips in Florida.
So how about your spiritual muscles? You know what? They atrophy just like those physical muscles. When was the last time you actually did a real Bible study on your own? I mean work, with a pen and paper, not just reading commentaries and doing a copy and paste job on your computer. In education classes they always told us that writing things down was a big key to information retention. Taking notes makes you hear the words again, saying them in your head as your write; then you feel yourself forming each letter of each word, and see them again after they are written. The more senses that are involved, the more likely you are to learn and remember.
Of course, putting knowledge into action is what makes it worthwhile. There is the meditation, the decision making and actual living based upon your newfound knowledge, and the teaching as you share what you learn. The more you learn and do, the stronger you become. Soon you will be tiptoeing through the pages of the Bible with more and more ease, more and more confidence, and more and more ability to live like God wants you to. Pick up your Bible and exercise a little.
For when by reason of time you ought to be teachers, you have need again that someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God, and have become such as those who need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness, for he is a baby. But solid food is for full-grown men, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil, Heb 5:12-14.
Dene Ward
When they took the cast off the right leg, the difference in the calf muscles was amazing. Crutches for two months followed by a cane for another two or three, means no exercise, and no exercise equals atrophy. The right calf was half the size of the left, and totally limp. For the next four years that did not matter too much; I still had a good left leg. Then the left foot did the same thing and here we go again—more surgery.
Now I had two wimpy calf muscles. Guess what you need when you try to reach something on the top shelf and need to stand on your toes? Guess what it feels like when you try to do that automatically, without thinking, with those sore heels and limp calf muscles? Yeow!
So for the next few months I worked on getting those muscles back into shape. The first time I tried toe raises, nothing happened! I concentrated hard and told myself to stand on tiptoe, and still nothing happened! So I found some exercises that I could do without trying to stand on my toes, that still made my calf muscles ache and burn. In a few weeks I actually went up about a half inch off the floor. Kind of hard to tell with your eyes a little over five feet higher than your feet, but I am pretty sure, based on what I could and could not reach on the top shelf. Progress! It wasn’t long till I could tiptoe through the tulips—if we had tulips in Florida.
So how about your spiritual muscles? You know what? They atrophy just like those physical muscles. When was the last time you actually did a real Bible study on your own? I mean work, with a pen and paper, not just reading commentaries and doing a copy and paste job on your computer. In education classes they always told us that writing things down was a big key to information retention. Taking notes makes you hear the words again, saying them in your head as your write; then you feel yourself forming each letter of each word, and see them again after they are written. The more senses that are involved, the more likely you are to learn and remember.
Of course, putting knowledge into action is what makes it worthwhile. There is the meditation, the decision making and actual living based upon your newfound knowledge, and the teaching as you share what you learn. The more you learn and do, the stronger you become. Soon you will be tiptoeing through the pages of the Bible with more and more ease, more and more confidence, and more and more ability to live like God wants you to. Pick up your Bible and exercise a little.
For when by reason of time you ought to be teachers, you have need again that someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God, and have become such as those who need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness, for he is a baby. But solid food is for full-grown men, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil, Heb 5:12-14.
Dene Ward
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