Midweek Account

Sunday pastor Barnett preached his last sermon at our church. He is going up to Michigan to pastor Calvary Bible Church in Kalamazoo. May God be with him. He gave a thought provoking sermon, with one of his main texts being Romans 14:12, "... each of us will give an account of himself to God." It made me wonder about my life. I know my sins are forgiven by the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross, but what have I done with the treasures I have? Have I obeyed the command of Christ to "let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven?" Do my words and deeds make people's thoughts soar heavenward and give glory to God, or do I say and do things that point people to mundane, or even worse, trashy things? Have I invested my time and energy in things that have eternal value, or have I frittered away my time on things that will soon fade away? Have I been bold enough to share the gospel with others who may not know the joy of having their sins forgiven through faith in Christ, or have I neglected that duty and privilege? I was thinking about these things on the way to work this morning when I called to mind the words of the hymn, Rise Up, O Men of God."

Rise up, O men of God.
Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and soul and mind and strength
to serve the King of Kings.

I should probably end this blog entry here, but I will go on to lesser things for the moment. I did not run Sunday, as is usual. Nor did I run Monday because my quadriceps were still incredibly sore from Saturday. Tuesday I finally ran at noon. My quads were sore at first, but they loosened up about a mile into the run. I ran from downtown around Swan Lake and back, just under five miles. Tuesday evening I had a fun time running with the RunnersWorld group. I started out with a visitor from Indiana, a nine year old boy named Jason. He was only going a mile, so I ran with him until the 1/2 mile post and sent him back while I continued on with Alicia, who is relatively new to our group. She is a fast runner, and she used to run cross country in high school, but the heat kind of got to her that evening. After about three miles at around a 9 minute pace, she had to walk a ways. With a half mile to go, we sped up to about an 8 minute per mile pace and finished strong. I enjoyed the run and hope Alicia keeps coming out.

Oh, and at noon today I ran to Veterans Park and did four sets of pull ups on the soccer goals and push ups, and then I did sit ups and inclined push ups on the picnic tables in the pavillion. Then I ran back to work. It was incredibly hot!