Featured Post

MY NOTES ON 'OLD-TIME MAKERS OF MEDICINE' BY JAMES JOSEPH WALSH, 1911

  First, here is a link to the audio that I listened to, which is free to download: https://librivox.org/old-time-makers-of-medicine-by-jame...

Thursday, June 16, 2011

THE FITNESS CRAZE


Oliver Huskinson began fitness training in 1918. (He was a little ahead of his time.) The fitness craze really began in the 1970’s alongside Participaction commercials on Canadian television. Training devices like the springs you see in the picture (or at the thrift store) were very popular then. What forty year old man doesn’t remember some lusty boy, maybe himself, busting his chops while trying to do curls with this booby-trapped invention?! Or maybe catching the skin of his chest in the springs?! But all of that’s beside my point.

 Maybe Mr. Huskinson’s story will encourage you to do some participaction. But you’ll probably not reach the age of 99 no matter what you do. And even if you did live for that long, and with vibrant health, so what? ‘He’s fit for life,’ it says. But how much longer can he have to live? What then? At the age of 130 Jacob told Pharaoh, “Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been” (Genesis 47.9.) The lesson I see there is that if Jacob the saint regarded his earthly pilgrimage as an evil one, how urgent it must be for the rest of us to get right with the God of Jacob? Jacob wrestled with the angel, and won the blessing. What does this teach us? That real blessings, like salvation, are had through wrestling with matters that are spiritual. How spiritual are your weights and your running shoes? Only a dumbbell will focus too much on these things.

Carnal man will always be obsessed with adding years to his body of sin. In vain he tries to beat death by improving a body that is programmed to die. “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass” (Isaiah 40.7.) If the ultimate cause of death is the LORD, then who can prevent it? A curse from the Almighty is what saps your strength. His curse is what sends you down that one way road to yonder cemetery. Does the LORD kill for nothing? The curse is in you because you are guilty of sin. Are you guilty of cursing the God who has cursed you? Do you lie, lust, steal, or sleep around? Then you are guilty. Death and hell are at the door. Death you cannot avoid. But Jesus Christ can help you miss hell. You have much to learn about this. You need a Bible, not another exercise gadget.

No comments: