This post is a bit different - it's perhaps not all as overtly 'christian' or religious in tone as some - but it's something I've been thinking about. It's taken me a few days to decide whether to upload it or not, but here goes anyway...
You may have seen in the news recently that one of Britain's best Olympic swimming stars, Rebecca Adlington, has retired. There seems to be a degree of criticism from various commentators. Commentators who, with all due respect, don't appear to have the faintest idea of what they're talking about. I was a competitive swimmer. I was good at water polo, to the extent of playing for the North of England but I wasn't a great competitive swimmer - I don't really have what it takes, physiologically. But I do know what it involves. And therefore Rebecca Adlington has my profoundest respect.
The criticism largely seems to revolve around how young she is, at 23, to be retiring. In my opinion, that isn't particularly young - the youngest 'Masters' age group for swimming is only 25-29 years of age (so, presumably, there's a good chance you'll be 'over the hill' at 25!). Unless you've done it, you really have no idea what competitive swimming involves. Swimming requires a unique mixture of strength, stamina and suppleness - a fitness combination which is very, very, hard to achieve, and even harder to maintain over any length of time. The training regime is more punishing than most folk could begin to imagine. Most of you aches, almost all of the time, and you almost always feel tired, except when in a 'taper' (reduction of the volume of training before an event). The training volume for an elite swimmer can be staggering - swimming 40-50km per week is not unusual, and in some cases may sometimes peak at 90-100km per week (though only for short periods). You crave each rest-day and the chance to wind down.
You can only keep that up for so long. Partly because, almost inevitably, you pick up injuries which make it harder. And partly because your body does, inevitably, change over time - it simply gets harder to do it! And, mentally, you get tired, and there comes a point when you just can't face the pain any more. I really can't blame her for quitting now, at the top of the sport. She's done fantastically well, and will, I hope, pass on her experiences to others.
I still swim - only a couple of thousand metres, a few times each week. I hate to admit it, but in swimming terms, I'm really, really, old. My body doesn't recover fast enough to manage more than about 10km each week. I do still work hard in those 10km, but it's enough punishment for me. I don't have the strength of will, or the physical ability, to do any more. I can still swim faster, and further, than probably 99% of the population. In some ways, it's frustrating knowing that I'll never again swim 50m in under 25 seconds. But in other ways, it's nice to be in the water, to still feel some of the thrill of swimming at speed, and to remember what it was like - good memories! It keeps me 'ticking over'. And it's a habit as much as it's anything else.
But this also makes me wonder about my spiritual life and fitness. The apostle Paul says:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27
I am ashamed to say that I do not live up to this. I do not manage to train myself, spiritually, in the way I did physically when I was a swimmer - and even still do. I never have. I can't seem to do it, though I don't know why. Perhaps it is linked to Romans 7:14-25:
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
So, I would guess that there's an element of spiritual warfare going on in me - I can do the physical discipline (because there isn't anything other than the physical working against me), but the spiritual equivalent is beyond me, as yet. The war is won, but the 'mopping up' operations continue - there are still battles to be fought, including this one - of spiritual discipline. Onwards and upwards - one day, presumably not in this life, God will perfect His work in me.