Last summer, I was in the best physical condition of my adult life. But a year of inactivity and a tendency to self-medicate a gnawing discontent with Little Debbie Nutty Bars and Oreo Double Stuffs has me about 30 lbs overweight and kinda disgusted with myself…

We’ll talk about the gnawing discontent another time…

So, I’ve started a fitness program… Not because I am obsessed with personal beauty but because I’d really like to be able to actually partake in the excellent hiking, bouldering and snowshoeing that I moved to Colorado to enjoy…

And for another reason that has been feeding that gnawing discontent that I mentioned before…

I am physically limited in my worship expression…

On the last Sunday that I didn’t play in the band, I was standing out in the congregation and I wanted to raise my hands…

But my shirt was too tight…

Dancing would be out of the question…

I only mention dancing because I know this dancer… She has a beautiful gift. I didn’t grow up in a “dancing” church, so it has always been an enigma to me as an expression of worship. I can read in the Bible that David danced before the Lord “with all his might,” but I’m challenged to envision what that might have looked like. I imagine that it was something like the way Hannah dances (that’s the dancer I know, by the way)… It’s not pretentious or showy, just graceful and glorious in a way that words don’t really capture…

Hannah gets migraine headaches that inhibit this gift…

Do you see where this is going?

I realized that my extra weight was inhibiting my worship and that I take my generally good health for granted… and take my body for granted as an instrument of worship… and I make choices that lessen the strength and fitness of my physical body where others struggle against illness or injury that comes at them against their wishes…

After the Jews had been in captivity in Babylon, they came back to find the Temple of God in ruins. The building had been destroyed and the ornamentations (crafted in the days of King Solomon from gold, silver, bronze, precious stones of almost every imaginable kind) had been plundered. One of the Harrods (they were kings) rebuilt the Temple, but the people wept because the new Temple had lost the glory of the previous one…

If my body is a temple… it’s seen better days…

My capacity to worship, whether it’s by raising my hands or helping build houses for the poor, might very well be lessened by my choice to snarf down a bag of Fritos…

So, what do you think… Is it just vain or shallow, or does the way we maintain our bodies really matter in a lifestyle of worship…