The Spirit Was Willing But The Flesh...

This white man wrote recently that there is a time for everything, a season for things to come and for things to pass. Well it seems I should have heeded my own advice! Today I attended a birthday picnic for one of our youth leaders who turned twenty (Happy Birthday Trinh!). Kim and Luc came along and with a bunch of other youth armed with bat and ball an impromptu cricket match quickly ensued. And that's when things went pear-shaped! In a flash of inspired insanity this white man re-lived his youthful days as an acrobatic fieldsman by leaping airborne to his right to take the "classic catch" of this summer! Green grass that looked so soft and inviting didn't prove so and now he's suffering for it...

As I sit here typing this my shoulder is aching and my ribs feel like they've been worked over by an angry mule! And it's in moments like these that I am forced to remember my words about a season for all things. And whilst I can taste the bilious bitterness of those words of wisdom regurgitating in my spiritual gullet, I acknowledge they are true. I must freely admit that my season of youthful athleticism ended some years ago. Whilst physically I am in very good shape right now compared with years gone by, my abilities are not what they were. This 37 year-old body is more limited now and I am feeling this reality and eating some humble pie in the process. Actually life has a way of paying one back as I can clearly remember a middle-aged red bearded DYS running at an Eastern Divisional Youth Athletics day. He'd talked himself up all day with the youth and in a pompous moment of ego grandly stripped down to his baggy running shorts and strode with aplomb to the starting blocks. The starters gun went off and he took off striding out with purpose to the first bend. Then, like he'd been shot he pulled up to a stop clutching the back of his leg - his hamstring and pride in tatters. As a young buck with little sympathy for big-talking leaders I laughed until my bladder protested! Yet who is laughing now?!

So there really is a season for everything and I guess the key to knowing this and living it out well is to understand what season you are in and live appropriately and proportionally to it's rhythm. So at least whilst I'm sore I feel better for learning a lesson.

And I dropped the catch if you really must know!