“Whenever you are tired, you are building muscle.”
What a stupid thing to say to me when I could barely lift a bar above my head.
It’s been decades since I laid down on a squishy bench while sweaty dude’s heaved and grunted around me to the sound of weight machines and country music. I’m glad I can’t smell that room anymore. It was my sophomore year of High School and I weighed about 135 pounds in soaking wet clothing and the ladies were not impressed. So I decided to bulk up. I started drinking something call creatine and carbo loading. I would go to a work out station and work muscles until ore and then move to another station.
But that day, my coach stopped me.
“Dale, you moron. You are doing this all wrong. Haven’t you been listening when I teach about this?”
Of course I hadn’t. “During his speeches, I was mostly just imagining myself dragging school busses behind me and picking up cars when a cat got stuck beneath them.
I was imagining all the ladies lining up to feel my biceps.
“Whenever you are tired, you are building muscle. That is the most important time to keep going.” He said.
And so I reluctantly sat back down and continued to work my pecs, while coach probably yelled some catchy slogans at me. I assume he was right. I never really bothered to look it up.
One thing I DO know: He is absolutely correct about life.
If every time we are sin or are sinned against we remove ourselves from Christian community, our resilience becomes weak. If every time we are depressed or anxious and we remove ourselves,
our emotional muscles stay weak.
Our most fruitful victories grow in the soil of darkest struggle.
Our muscles for compassion and forgiveness are strengthened by our own suffering.
Mountains move when we learn to trust God in spite of our doubt, not in the absence of it.
This Sunday, we will gather as the church.
We will sing songs, pray together and learn from God’s word together.
We will also find hope in Jesus’ story of a poor beggar woman who endures when evil conspires against her.
I hope you will join us.
And don’t forget,
When you are tired, burned out, beat down and anxious.
You are building muscle.
-Pastor Dale