Exercise daily in God -- no spiritual flabbiness please! Workouts in the gymnasium are useful but a disciplined life in God is far more so, making you fit both today and forever. I Timothy 4: 4 (The Message)

Welcome to your day! 

When Paul, in 1 Timothy 4, instructs Timothy to exercise daily in God, his context was clear: "Timothy, how will you be able to cut through the clouds of faith-abandoning confusion and spiritual calamity that will surround your congregation if you don't pray, give thanks, chew on the Message of faith and follow its teachings . . . daily?"

In this chapter, Paul doesn't say what time of day or for how long, to pray, give thanks or chew on the Message of faith. He just says  . . . daily.

Every day.

How-to bestsellers aside, there's some comfort in the absence of time and length specifics. And there's freedom to approach these disciplines in ways that are for you and the Holy Spirit to decide. Perhaps how we pray is less important than the fact that we are praying at all. Perhaps the absence of these specifics heightens the importance of the specific Paul does give: pray, give thanks, meditate, obey . . . daily.

Today is March 1. Having let go of my fitness routine since November 2009,1 vow to fill every day from now until December 31 with eight servings of fresh fruits and vegetables, eight glasses of water and as the weather improves, 30 minutes of walking and jogging with Sandra, my neighbour. I've always wanted to be physically fit and free . . . free from fat; free from feeding my feelings. Free to enjoy food (as fuel for my body); free to run, unencumbered by weight of any sort.

Perhaps this time, I'll reach these goals of fitness and freedom: I may not finish eight servings or eight glass every day. But I'll have had something green or orange or red . . . every day. I'll have had at least one glass of water . . . every day. And Sandra and I may never become runners, but at least we'll be walking . . . every day. Better yet, I'll have cut through the expensive confusion and calamity of "eat this and lose; buy that and melt the inches."

How are you doing with your dailies?

"Make running a time for you." from The Beginning Runners' Handbook by Ian MacNeill