Journal Entries

Being “one of us” is a powerful thing. We are all stronger because of the communities we belong to.

This morning our family engaged in one of our semi-annual Thanksgiving traditions – we joined 37,000 other runners and walkers for the 42^nd annual Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot 8-mile and 5K races. It was a great morning; just cool enough stay comfortable in winter running gear, but warm enough to be pleasant and friendly. It was great to be a part of such a large tribe of people, to be one of us with all of them. How often can so many people get together with no fighting and everyone friendly to each other? The only reason there were police on the scene was to protect us from traffic, not from each other. There was energy hanging in the air from so many people with shared goals. It was contagious. We were all wearing the proper tribal colors (race T-shirts, high-tech fabrics, running shoes), and we all had fun.

That many people won’t fit in the small space of a street on one city block. The pack of runners waiting to start spilled over onto all the sidewalks and side streets and stretched a long way from the starting line. And a group that size won’t move very quickly, even after the starting horn sounds. It always takes a long time before everyone is up to speed; the crowd uncoils like a big slinky. I got closer to the starting line this year than ever before, which meant I started moving (shuffling) only two minutes after the horn went off. Usually it takes 8 to 10 minutes before I start moving my feet.

About a half-mile into the race I found myself trapped behind three double-sized baby strollers being pushed side-by-side, the pushers talking and gossiping and giggling like old friends, all six kids nestled into their blankets. They created a barrier across the road of about 15 feet, leaving a huge wad of runners dammed up behind them trying to find a way around. But that sort of thing is what you should expect in a family event so huge.

By the time I hit mile two, I finally passed my last group of walkers – I don’t mean runners who occasionally walk, but people who never intended to run at all. They were easy to identify by their huge fleece jackets and blue jeans. It took me two miles to catch up them, meaning they must have lined up very near the starting line to be so far ahead of me. I got into place about 20 minutes before the race start; they must have lined up an hour before.

As I settled into my pace for eight miles, I thought about how running has become such a family marker for us. And this particular race has been part of our Thanksgiving tradition for ten years.

Running together is something that has become so important and identifiable with us, yet it started off in our group back in 1978 with me trying to impress a girl. I thought I had to do something athletic to win her attention and I choose running because it had the least skill requirements for a beginner. I was never any good as a runner but I just kept stumbling along. Who knew Cyndi would eventually join me? Who knew Byron and Katie would join in? Who knew Katie would marry an athlete and drag him into our running tribe?

Our beginning with running was fragile and tenuous to start with, but over time it became a fundamental part of our story. And it is our shared stories that make us a tribe, that make us … one of us.

This single activity sets us apart from most of the world but joins us with the thousands of families we ran with this morning. Why did we stick to it? How did it become so important? Who knows?

How often the defining markers of our tribes, the activities and attitudes that link us together, that bind us together, are so fragile and thin. Community can be very subtle. We had a lot of things in common with 37,000 people today, even more things not in common, yet I might feel more a part of that group even without knowing anyone else’s name than I might feel with some family members that I’ve known for decades.

The older I get the more I value the communities I belong to. Maybe its because my family has grown, and grown up, so its been more important for us to get together. Maybe its because I’m finally convinced I cannot do it all myself - or I can’t do it well all by myself - or I no longer want to do it myself. Or maybe I’ve finally listened to the advice of friends who understood the value of community for their entire lives.

Community has to be guarded and cherished. Our tribe is held together only by a few things, but they have become strong things. I am looking forward to more.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

To follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

To contact Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

To post a comment or subscribe to this free journal: http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved.

This blog will be moving to a new location. I will continue to post to both locations for a short while, but if you’d like to continue to read these posts, try: http://journalentries.typepad.com/

You can also subscribe to the email version of this blog at: http://journalentries.typepad.com/

Thanks

Berry Simpson

I was reading from Jesus’ final words to his disciples before he died: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” (John 15:1-2, NIV)

Two years ago, after reading that same verse, I wrote in the margin of my Daily Bible, “I lost the election; was that pruning so my life will be even more fruitful?”

Cyndi and I bought our first house in 1980 while living in Brownfield, Texas, when we were just children.

OK, we weren’t really children; we had jobs and degrees and bills and a baby, and one of us had a library card, but it was so long ago it seems like a different life. We lived in a trailer donated by Cyndi’s mom, in the Careyville Mobile Home Village, because there were no apartments for rent. After only one winter with the west Texas wind whistling through that trailer, carrying dust through the walls and blowing out the pilot in our heater and freezing the water pipes, I had enough. I wanted something else. We bought a house on Oak Street from the youth minister at our church, and one feature of the house was a significant rose garden alongside the driveway.

I ignored the roses and let them live alone in peace during our first spring in the house, but the second spring I decided I could learn to become a master rose gardener. I got lots of advice on how to prune the branches for maximum rose production. I weeded the beds constantly and fed them and pampered them all spring and summer. I was out pruning those rose bushes at least two or three days a week and we had beautiful roses all season long. We had roses in our house and gave them to all our friends. That year we had a plethora of roses, way more roses than the previous spring when we left them to grow on their own.

I thought about my rose-farming experiment when I read this verse from John 15. The part about God pruning the fruit-bearing branches wasn’t what I expected. My first thought was that he would prune only the lazy unresponsive non-bearing branches.

As I’ve gotten older and found a better handle on my real strengths and talents, I’ve slowly eliminated from my life the activities and projects I don’t do well, focusing instead on my strengths. I have engaged in self-pruning to maximize my effectiveness and to live the life God has called me to live. I want to act out of the strength of my life and not be distracted by the things I don’t do well. Being able to make those choices is one advantage of getting older.

But if I’m reading John 15 correctly, it says that God will prune away even my strengths and talents, my fruit-bearing areas, my best branches, to make them even better. Is that what I want?

Does that mean God might take away the opportunities I’m good at? Does it mean he might limit my exposure or impact even when I’m doing what he told me to do? Will God take me out of roles and responsibilities where I excel? As in, city government?

Most of us aren’t the best judges of our own lives. We don’t recognize our own strengths and we underestimate the effect of our lives on people around us. Often, those same people can see our strength and significance better than we see them ourselves.

So if God prunes something out of our life that we thought was one of our best attributes, well, maybe it wasn’t our best after all. Just because we get a lot of praise and attention from something doesn’t mean it’s successful in God’s eyes. In fact, all of that may become a distraction from where God really wants us to be.

So Tuesday morning, after reading from John 15, I posted this on Twitter: “Every branch that does bear fruit he prunes. Will he cut back something I’m good at, to improve?”

Because my Twitter account rolls over to Facebook, I got several responses to the post. Mark wrote: “Perhaps that’s what the city council thing was about? It made room for Running with God.” (Running with God is the title of my first book.)

I think Mark was right. In fact, the first time I noticed this particular verse was when I read it on November 16, 2007, only 10 days after losing a city-wide election. It was all still fresh on my mind when I made those notes in the margin of my Bible.

But now, two years later, at least for this particular example, the part of my life that God pruned away, the part I thought was so important to my identity and significance, well, after only a few months, a few weeks even, it was gone from my mind. I never missed it. Some day I may take another turn at government, but for now it has simply disappeared. It was so long ago it seems like a different life.

Pruning is always future-oriented; the loss happens now, but the gains come later. At the moment of pruning, there is no evidence of what is to come; we have no proof there will be something better. All we have is the faith that we will be more fruitful. If I believe John 15, which I do, then I must relax and trust God when a part of my life gets pruned away, and wait to see where the new and better fruit will come from next.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

To follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

To contact Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

To post a comment or subscribe to this free journal: http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved.

One Friday found me at Wendy’s in Plainview (an appropriately named town) eating lunch, on my way to Aunt Teena’s farm near Sedan, New Mexico, to pick com. I was reading from my Daily Bible, from Jeremiah 36, about a time when God told Jeremiah to write down all his sermons and prophecies.

By this time in Jeremiah’s life he had been preaching for over twenty years; what a chore it must have been to recall everything he’d said. I doubt he had a folder of sermon notes in his file cabinet. Maybe he kept some form of journal through the years - that isn’t too farfetched since much of the book of Jeremiah is made up of his personal observations and analysis. Also, since he was following Gods direction to write it all down, maybe God helped him remember.

The story says Jeremiah asked another man, Baruch, to write down the words while Jeremiah dictated. Being a writer who edits a lot, I can’t imagine writing with pen and ink on a papyrus scroll without a word processor. Almost nothing that I write is readable on the first draft.

But they did it, and Baruch went to the temple to read Jeremiah’s words aloud. Some of the king’s officials got wind of the reading and had Baruch give them a private reading. What they heard scared them. It was obvious to them these were words from God, and they recognized Jeremiah’s hand in all of it. They knew that King Jehoiakim needed to hear it.

The next scene is one of those stories I have known since early childhood. I remember the picture from children’s Bible class showing a regal-looking bearded king sitting in his throne beside an open fire while Baruch read the words.

The Bible says Jehoiakim used a scribe’s knife – I guess an early editing tool - to slice off the portion of the scroll after the words were read aloud and then burned those pieces in the fire. It was a dramatic scene, which is probably why I remember the picture so well even though I haven’t seen a copy in at least 45 years.

What did Baruch think as he was reading? The king was destroying months of work right before his eyes. Surely he was angry about that; yet he was reading aloud before the king himself, an honor few experienced. And what would happen when he read the last paragraph and it was burned up - would the king turn his scribe’s knife on Baruch? He must have worried about that as he read.

I wonder how often our work for God gets burned up by some contemptuous unbeliever after we’ve spent months or years working on it? Do we wonder why we did it all when the only remainder is smoke curling up to the ceiling?

And why did God expect Jeremiah and Baruch to go through all of this if he knew it would be burned up? Did God intentionally waste their time? Did he assign them a futile mission as a mean joke?

No, of course not. I think God was giving King Jehoiakim one more chance to repent before the hammer fell on him. Or maybe God’s intended audience that day was never the king himself but some member of his royal court. Preachers and teachers never know for certain which person in their class is the real target.

All we can do is speak what God gives us, when he asks us, and trust him with the outcome. After all, Jeremiah’s words were burned, but I still have a copy.

Cyndi likes to say, “It’s possible to become richer by giving away.” The problem with giving away – whether money or home-cooked food or talent and energy, or even written words directed by God – is that we don’t know what the recipient will do with the gift. If we worry about whether it will be used or appreciated, well, we haven’t really given it away, have we? We simply have to give ourselves and our stuff away and trust God to take care of it.

Jeremiah must have known the only way to preserve his words for all time was to give them away, even if that meant they might be destroyed by an unbelieving king. His gift certainly lasted longer than the arrogant King Jehoiakim. There I was, 2,600 years later, in Wendy’s, in Plainview, reading Jeremiah’s gift.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

To follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

To contact Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

To post a comment or subscribe to this free journal: http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved.

This blog will be moving to a new location. I will continue to post to both locations for a short while, but if you’d like to continue to read these posts, try: http://journalentries.typepad.com/

You can also subscribe to the email version of this blog at: http://journalentries.typepad.com/

Thanks

Berry Simpson

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” (NAS) Again, in a different version, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” (NIV)

I have known this verse - I’ve had it memorized - since my college days, at least 30 years. Yet, for most of those years I wasn’t diligent about my heart at all. I didn’t even understand what it meant to watch over or guard my heart.

Guarding our hearts, there’s more to this than merely avoiding evil. Erwin McManus compared it to building core strength. Anyone who has worked out in the gym under an instructor for the past ten years, or read a magazine article about getting stronger, knows that everything comes from our core strength. In the fitness world, it is all about core strength training nowadays

Cyndi and I ran the Dallas Half-Marathon last Sunday, around White Rock Lake and adjacent neighborhoods. Our original plan was to run with Katie as a family sort of thing, but then she got pregnant and wimped out of the race. So, it was just Cyndi and me (and 4,000 other runners we didn’t know).

I actually handled the distance better than I expected considering my poor excuse for long training runs; well, I was beaten-up and tired at the end, but not defeated. One reason was because I’ve been training with Jeff Galloway’s method: alternating running five minutes and walking one minute; it has helped a lot.

Galloway has been part of my overall scheme for recovering from injury, coping with seemingly permanent knee aches, and my strategy to keep doing this sort of thing for a few more decades.

He encourages runners to insert regular walking breaks into their running, whatever the distance. Galloway wrote, “When taken from the beginning of all long runs, walk breaks erase fatigue, speed recovery, reduce injury, and yet bestow all of the endurance benefits of the distance covered.”

I kept to my 5/1 schedule, making small adjustments whenever necessary to space my walking breaks with the water stops. I was able to start back running every time, and I maintained a better average pace than I would’ve had I tried to run every step. That is, until I got to I0 miles.

At 10 miles, I just felt drained. I hit the wall. I don’t know if it was because that was the length of my longest training run, or if it was just what happened that day. I adjusted my pattern to running 4:00 and walking 1:00, but I still struggled. I eventually finished the half-marathon by walking 100 steps and running I00 steps (my old backpacking trick). I wanted to finish in less than three hours, so I kept working hard. I did finally finish in 2:55. An embarrassingly slow time to actually commit to paper and hard drive, but even at that, it was about 20 minutes better than my last half-marathon in Austin. It is my recovery-era half-marathon P.R. Hopefully, the first comeback in a new trend.

Back in 2005 when I first realized my left knee was hurt, I actually looked forward to surgery. I wanted a quick fix to put it back like it was. I was willing to put up with surgery if that’s what it took to fix it in a hurry.

What I eventually discovered, thanks to my new friends at the Seton Clinic in Austin, was that what I needed instead, was to increase my core strength. I followed a prescribed series of exercises every day to build my core strength and correct my muscle imbalances. It is a project I’ll continue to work on for the rest of my life if I want to keep moving.

It’s a similar story about our heart. We want quick fixes, weekend seminars, and fast solutions, but it takes a lifetime of guarding and feeding and protecting and building core strength to avoid heart injury. That is the “with all diligence” part.

Everything of value comes from the core. Everything comes from our heart. We have to go to our core and get stronger inside if we want to be productive and long-lasting in our heart.

This is not a passive activity. We have to take the initiative to get stronger. We can’t just hope or pray it gets stronger, we have to work it. We have to do the exercises.

We also have to eliminate the things that hurt us. What have I allowed to inform my life? It is good? What have I allowed to shape my heart? Am I feeding my heart what it needs? What kind of crappyjack have I been eating?

Proverbs tells me to guard my heart, for it is the wellspring of life. God actually sees me as generative, able to create life. My heart is a wellspring; life can flow from me.

This is way different than merely protecting what I have or guarding what I know or staying away from evil. This is not a defensive posture, but an offensive posture. I am supposed to use my heart to create life in other people.

How about you? How do you guard your heart? How do you strengthen your core?

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To order Berry’s newest book, “Running With God,” go to: http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

You can follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

To contact, write to berry@stonefoot.org. To post a comment or subscribe to this free weekly journal, visit http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/,

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved.

This morning I was reading a series of parables taught by Jesus, and I was struck by how often Jesus said, “He who has ears, let him hear,” and “Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.” Everyone Jesus talked to had ears and eyes, but not everyone heard what Jesus said. Some were paying attention of other voices. Jesus was speaking to those who were spiritually tuned in, or as we used to say in CB radio days, “People who had their ears on.” Lots of people heard Jesus, but fewer listened to him, and fewer still let him speak directly into their life. They are the ones Jesus blessed.

l woke up early this morning, at 5:40 AM, to get ready for my men’s class, and the song lyric running through my head as I got out of bed was, “Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see,” from Strawberry Fields Forever by John Lennon. John was correct. It’s a lot easier to stumble through life not seeing the world and people around us; it was easier for the crowd to hang around Jesus if they kept their ears and eyes closed. Easier, but they missed the encounter with the Son of God. They misunderstood what they saw, thinking he was merely a miracle-working holy man, missing the Savior of the World.

The reason I was singing Strawberry Fields in my head first thing this morning was, well, I’m singing one song or another in my head almost all the time, and quite often the song is my first thought in the morning, but I was singing John Lennon in my head because I have been watching a movie this week called Across The Universe. My son, Byron, bought the movie for me a year ago, and he asked if I’d watched it whenever we talked. I finally watched it this week. It’s a musical based on songs by The Beatles and set in New York City in the late I960s. It has been playing inside my head all week.

I found myself walking down the sidewalk listening to the guitar riff from Come Together. And then I drove by Cyndi’s school say hello and to flirt with her, and in my head I was singing, “Dear Prudence, won’t you come out and play.”

Then I was working on some writing and in my head I heard, “There is nothing you can do that can’t be done, nothing you can say that can it be sung, there is nothing you can know that isn’t known, nothing you can see that isn’t shown.” I don’t know whether those lyrics helped or hurt the writing process, but they wouldn’t go away, and I didn’t really mind.

There are some movies that I can watch and enjoy and appreciate before filing them away in my memory for future reference. Other movies simply take over my life for a few days. I’ve learned not to fight the take-over, but to wallow in it. I’ll watch a particular movie several times and let it sink in. Most of the time I’m not even sure which images affect me; I just know I need to linger in the experience.

This week I was also listening to an audio book titled, “My Revolutions,” by Hari Kunzru. It was about a 1960s radical-turned-terrorist, living quietly under a new name with a family that didn’t know his history, who finds his past catching up with him. Reading (or listening to) that book, and watching the movie, put my brain firmly into the late I960s all week.

In real time I was too young to understand the I960s. I was too young to appreciate The Beatles until I was in college, long after they had broken up. I was too young to be a hippie; in fact, I’m not sure we actually had any hippies in Kermit, Texas. I did grow my hair out in the I970s, but I was never a hippie. And I certainly never lived like the characters in the movie or the book. Yet, I couldn’t shake them off.

So thinking about what Jesus said, one reason I read my Bible is to keep my eyes and ears open. I want the words and character of God to haunt me though the rest of the day in the same way that movie did. Even if I don’t have a specific verse in mind or a point to ponder, I know if I just read and wallow in it, it will make me a better man. I don’t want to misunderstand what I see. I don’t want to live an easy life with my eyes closed. I want to live with open eyes and open ears. I want to be blessed.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To order Berry’s newest book, “Running With God,” go to:

http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/running-with-god.html

You can follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

To contact the author, write to berry@stonefoot.org. To post a comment or subscribe to this free weekly journal, visit http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/,

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved.

October 20 is a big day for me; it is Christmas, in a way.

Each year I read through “The Daily Bible in Chronological Order,” one day at a time. Since it’s arranged chronological order, it reads more like a grand story, from beginning to end. The big story of God and mankind.  The psalms and prophets are mingled in place with the historical accounts; Paul’s letters are placed where they belong among the record in Acts, and like that.

On October 20, after almost ten full months of daily readings, the story changes in a big way. Jesus Christ is born. So every year I can celebrate Christmas in October.

Last year I sent out a whole slew of text messages announcing Merry Christmas. As it turns out I confused a lot of people who received the message but didn’t know who it came from. I got quite a few replies asking, “Who is this?” So this year I posted my Merry Christmas on Facebook and email. I don’t have much of a presence on Twitter, yet, but I gave that a try as well.

Unfortunately the Christmas story is so familiar and I have read it so many times it is hard to read it again. My mind jumps ahead and forms the words before my eyes get to them. That’s one good reason to read the story in October instead of December; it sort of catches me by surprise.

I thought about Zechariah, the husband of Elizabeth and father of John the Baptist. When the angel told him that he would finally be a father after so many years, he said, “How can I be sure? My wife and I are very old.” And because of that the angel took away his ability to speak. I wrote in the margin of my Bible: “Seems harsh; surely he was allowed one question. Moses argued with God in front of the burning hush and he didn’t get into trouble.” What did Zechariah do that was so bad?

And then the story shifts to Mary, mother of Jesus, who was confronted by an angel who said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” It says Mary was greatly troubled at his words. I wrote in the margin: “I can see why the presence of an angel might scare her, but his words should be affirming not troubling.” Why was Mary so afraid?

I don’t know why Zechariah got into trouble or why Mary was afraid; it was only words. But I know my words to God matter, as do his words to me. Sometime I get so comfortable praying I forget how important it is, what a privilege it is, how eternal it is. I forget the power of words.

I don’t know why Zachariah got into so much trouble after asking only one question. We know from other stories in the Bible that God usually allowed a lot of questions. There must be more to this story than we’re told. Something must have been going on between Zachariah and God that we aren’t privy to, but it must have been clear to Zachariah since he didn’t fight back and doesn’t appear to have resented what happened to him. in fact, once his son was born, and once Zachariah’s voice was restored, the first thing he did was praise God. He didn’t complain and didn’t ask why.

I think Zachariah got into trouble because of the condition of his heart rather than his words. I take from this story that my words are important to God, but not as important as my heart. I don’t have to live in fear that I might pray the wrong thing or ask the wrong question. What I need to be concerned about is the condition of my heart and the status of my relationship with God.

What about Mary? Why was she so troubled by the angel’s words? Maybe in the same way that I get nervous and start moving backwards when someone says, “You’d be really great at this..” I try to avoid being recruited for something new.

Mary didn’t stay troubled. As the angel laid out the plan, Mary began to praise God; her words - the Song of Mary, the Magnificat – are some of the best in the entire Bible.

We don’t have to be afraid of the words from God. Even if what he is asking us to do is troubling at first, We just have to relax and listen and let him speak to us. We can trust God when he speaks.

October 20 was a strong day for me. Let me be one of the first to say to you, Merry Christmas.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Order Berry’s newest book, “Running With God,” from Amazon.com …

http://www.amazon.com/RUNNING-GOD-Berry-Simpson/dp/1607915448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252036627&sr=8-1

You can follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved. To contact the author, write to berry@stonefoot.org. To post a comment, visit http://berry.voxtropolis.com, or visit “Journal Entry by BDS” on Facebook. To receive this free weekly journal, write to journalentry-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

One of the things I’ve wondered about for as long as I’ve been a wonderer is how did the Romans do it? And Monday, while I was running in the cool rainy weather, listening to a podcast interview with some famous movie animator, for some reason I wondered about it again. How did the Romans conquer the world, rule the wide variety of people, collect all those taxes, and build aqueducts to move water hundreds of miles, using Roman numerals? How did they accomplish anything without a place-value numbering system?

In my opinion, you can’t do anything with Roman numerals except try to look impressive. There are a few remaining users: the Super Bowl, Popes and Kings, some clock faces, literary outlines, the Olympics, and the names of Army corps. Publishers used to use Roman numerals to indicate the date of publication, and I suspect they did it to intentionally obscure the actual date so readers couldn’t know the true age of a book, but they don’t use them anymore.

Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz invented their own mathematical notations and numbering systems in order to develop and describe calculus. The Romans couldn’t even do 1st-grade math with their numbering system. Who knows how to subtract IV from XXIX? No one does without converting to regular numbers. And how do you express zero with Roman numerals? You can’t.

Yet, the Romans built some spectacular things. How did they do it? Was their secret unlimited slave labor? Could they have had so many people working on a design that the math didn’t matter? Those aqueducts - maybe they built multiple aqueducts of various designs, and then tore down the ones that didn’t work, a grand municipal trial-and-error method based on slave labor? I don’t think so.

“Who cares?” you might ask, and I can’t blame you if you do. The only reason I thought about Roman numerals while listening to an animator describe his work was because only a few minutes before I had been listening to a different podcast by Erwin McManus. Something he said was still ringing in my ears. He compared our lives to Roman numerals, saying our value is determined by who we have next to us. I couldn’t stop thinking about what he said.

For example, a Roman “I” can stand for one (I) or two (II), or three (III), or four (IV), or nine (IX), and so on, based on what symbol is next to it. Unlike our place-value numbering system, it is a relational numbering system. The value of a symbol is based on who it’s related to.

I’ve seen in my own life, as I get older, that my true value comes from who I stand next to rather than my actual place value. As McManus said, I’m like a Roman numeral, whose value is determined by the other numerals around it.

So it is for all of us. Our value in this world is based less on absolute place value and more on who we are next to, who we are related to. Our value comes from who we help, who we learn from, who we team up with, and who we serve alongside.

I don’t think I’m finished thinking about this, though. Maybe during tomorrow’s run it will occur to me that we are all more like differential equations, or more like cuneiform, or maybe even more like cave paintings. What do you think?

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Order Berry’s newest book, “Running With God,” from Amazon.com …

http://www.amazon.com/RUNNING-GOD-Berry-Simpson/dp/1607915448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252036627&sr=8-1

You can follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved. To contact the author, write to berry@stonefoot.org. To post a comment, visit http://berry.voxtropolis.com, or visit “Journal Entry by BDS” on Facebook. To receive this free weekly journal, write to journalentry-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Erwin McManus wrote. “We want to feel good about ourselves more than we want ourselves to become good.” (Stand Against the Wind).

We want to feel like we’re smart more than we want to study and learn. We want to feel like we can sing all the notes more than we want to devote endless hours studying the music. We want to feel like marathon runners more than we want to do 22-mile training runs. We want to feel like we are getting stronger more than we actually want to use our strength to help people.

So Wednesday morning I went to Cyndi’s Body Pump class at Gold’s Gym at 5:30 AM. I have been going to this particular early class since last spring, yet, I can’t think of anything I do more against my basic nature than getting up at 5:00 AM. My goal is to make at least three Pump classes each weak, and I go early on Wednesdays only because Cyndi teaches and I want to be in her class.

I have been doing Body Pump workouts for about four years now, and I can tell I have put on significant muscle mass. I am stronger today than I’ve ever been, including back when I was much younger.

Body Pump is a group exercise class using low weights and high repetitions. The weights are easy to adjust, and the challenge of the class is to put enough weight on the bar to create a meaningful workout yet not so much you can’t complete the routines. There is some trial-and-error involved in converging on the perfect weight. My personal goal is to have enough weight on my bar that l can’t actually complete every single rep. I want to get stronger, and the only way I know how to get stronger is to lift as much as possible, and the only way I know how much is possible is to have enough weight so that I can’t keep lifting it. I’m sure that isn’t the officially recommended method for weight determination, but it’s my theory and practice.

That means that while I’m getting stronger, I’m not that good at the Body Pump routines. I have to take breaks and miss reps.

One of the reasons I don’t worry as much about perfect Pump routines as I do about actual weight lifted is because of something I read in an Outside Magazine. The article said our goal shouldn’t be simply to excel at the gym machines and classes and all that. Too many guys workout hard mainly so they can be good at working out. The have perfect machine-technique in order to be really good at the machines.

Our goal should be functional strength, not gym technique. I don’t want to just be stronger than I was before, I want to be strong enough to run marathons, strong enough to help friends move into a new house, strong enough to play all day with my nephew or someday with grandkids, strong enough to haul a 65 lbs. backpack seven miles up a trail at I0,000′ altitude, and strong enough to be able to keep doing all that stuff for a long time. I want to get stronger because I want freedom of choices.

All that work in the gym is mostly worthless if it doesn’t translate into real life. If it doesn’t make a difference in how I live and relate to other people, it is just busy work. Maybe being fitter will allow me to live longer. but who cares that I live longer if I’m living only for myself.

Later Wednesday morning, after class, as I was working on my lesson for Sunday’s young-adult Bible study class, I couldn’t help thinking about my early morning gym workout. I thought about how my biceps and shoulders were a little sore every time I moved my backpack. I realized it doesn’t matter how much I teach about Psalms (this week’s lesson: Psalm 5I) or how good I teach, or any of that, if what I learn doesn’t make a difference in my everyday life. I don’t want to simply feel good about myself as a teacher. It is wasted effort to get pumped-up spiritually just to be better at what happens inside the church building, just as it is a waste to get pumped-up physically just to be better inside the gym. I don’t want to merely feel good about myself, I want to become good, I want to do good.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Order Berry’s newest book, “Running With God,” from Amazon.com …

http://www.amazon.com/RUNNING-GOD-Berry-Simpson/dp/1607915448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252036627&sr=8-1

You can follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved. To contact the author, write to berry@stonefoot.org. To post a comment, visit http://berry.voxtropolis.com, or visit “Journal Entry by BDS” on Facebook. To receive this free weekly journal, write to journalentry-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.