We continue our summer worship series, Notice Grace All Summer, with reflection on Crossfit & church this Sunday.
How was fitness a part of your childhood? How do you relate to fitness today?
Crossfit is a rapidly growing fitness program started by Greg & Lauren Glassman in 2000. Over 3,400 Crossfit gyms have opened in the last twelve years across the county. In an article titled “Understanding CrossFit” (April 2007) Coach Greg Glassman writes, We sought to build a program that would best prepare trainees for any physical contingency—prepare them not only for the unknown but for the unknowable as well. The CrossFit prescription is “constantly varied, high-intensity, functional movement.” … The methodology that drives CrossFit is entirely empirical. We believe that meaningful statements about safety, efficacy, and efficiency, the three most important and interdependent facets of any fitness program, can be supported only by measurable, observable, repeatable facts; i.e., data. We call this approach “evidence-based fitness.”
Worship this coming Sunday will invite us to consider what the church might learn from Crossfit.
Our Scripture this week is Psalm 52. This is a difficult Psalm to comprehend. In essence, the Psalmist cries out in this song for God to ultimately overcome those whose lives are unjust and deceptive. The Psalmist closes this song by comparing themself to an olive tree in the house of God. The image echoes Jeremiah 11:16 which states, “The Lord once called you, ‘A green olive tree, fair with goodly fruit’; but with the roar of a great tempest he will set fire to it, and its branches will be consumed.” It seems the Psalmist invites us to consider how might we be like a green olive tree with deep roots. If we fail to have deep roots, our fruit too will wither.
What evidence do you have that your roots are deep and your fruit is “goodly”? How are you deepening your roots these days? Think back on your goals for the year regarding rooting your life in Grace and growing in faith and reaching in love. How are you doing with those goals? If you don’t have goals at this time, what might it be like to identify a goal for one of these areas?
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