Get Weight Loss by Running Around the Block
Ed, my old neighbor from Saskatchewan, refused to listen to my whining about a lack of progress on my diet. I have hit a disappointing bottom. I lost eight pounds but they are refusing to stay lost and have started to come home again. Counting calories, exercising at the gym, has not kept me dropping weight. I have tried to survive on smaller portions with no snacking after supper, but my war against my fat is at a stand-off.
“It’s not a crisis worthy of consideration,†according to Ed. “If your weight gets bad enough you can get on the television show, ‘Biggest Loser,’ and get both thinner and richer!†Ed believes that a financial crisis is the only real problem of concern in a person’s life. Ed advised me that I need to run twenty-five times around the block each morning, noon, and night, and my blubber will melt away. If my weight continues to refuse any reduction, I may have to try Ed’s advice.
I have a great resistance to taking advice from Ed. His instructions may be clear, but they do not always seem to be in my best interests. If Ed would come here and run around the block seventy-five times a day, I would be more eager to do the same. I would certainly try it if he lost weight after doing it for a few days or weeks. I want to feel assured that advice has been tried and proven to be beneficial before I follow it. I want to be in control of what I do, but my diet has proven it is more than what I do. Serious dieting does not necessarily lead to the weight loss desired. I can add weight effortlessly, but I cannot easily subtract it even with rigorous dieting.
In the season of Lent, Christians are called to remember only God is in control. We have only a limited control of our lives. Bill Wilson (A.A.) learned in his addiction to alcohol that he could not control his drinking, but that God was in control of everything even those lost in addictions. He came to think, “No matter how wrong things seem to be, they are still all right. Things are all right with God and His world.†God can overlook our addictions, our sins and faults and failures. God seeks to save and heal sinners both those that drink too much and those who think of themselves self-righteously. God’s loving forgiveness is a gift because he is love and is in control.
Lent reminds us that control is not ours but God’s. We see things as either good or bad, but God is at work in both. Although Jesus was good and kind to people, his enemies plotted to kill him. The disciples felt like their whole world went wrong when Jesus was arrested and crucified. Even after Jesus arose from the dead they were slow to understand God was in control of all that happened. Jesus laid down his life for sinners. God sent him to be the atoning sacrifice for all the sins of the whole world on the cross. Jesus willingly shed his blood as the true Lamb of God to erase the sins of the world.
