I woke up early this morning and a word came to my mind that has come up in conversations more than once in the last little while. The word is “routine”, a word that is sometimes in our younger generation, looked on as being as bad for you as “poutine”.
Now I have only had poutine once in my life and I still get shivers up my spine when I think of the experience that lasted far too long as far as my “inward parts” were concerned.
But I remember a time when I had a routine and I rather enjoyed it. Life these days seem to be so busy and disjointed as I go from one thing to the next, one person to the next, and one spiritual interlude to the next.
In the minds of some of our younger adults, routine is a bad word because they liken it to being stuck in a rut. And I find myself pleasantly amused when a short time later, after they have enjoyed real life, one by one, these same people are saying that they need to get their life into some kind of… routine?
I don’t care how old we are, I think we all need routine, it’s how we function best. The reason I thought of routine when I woke up at 4 am was that I used to get up and spend time in the Word and in prayer and then go to the gym before starting a 10 hour shift at the mill. I felt great, spiritually and physically.
I was talking to someone yesterday who was going to rejoin the gym. I was trying to figure out how I could ever fit it in to my now busier than ever schedule with meetings at all hours, people at all hours, and God, not always cooperating in giving me a sermon early in the week so I can have that out of the way. And after I finally stopped, he reminded me; “didn’t you get up and go to the gym before work a while ago”; touché.
That brought to mind Paul’s words to the Corinthians;
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified. ” - 1 Corinthians 9:24-27