At the beginning of 2020, I was on a pretty good roll. I was back working out at Planet Fitness before heading into work in the morning. I wasn’t at the gym every day, but I was a regular. Even when Covid-19 started to make itself known, I kept up this habit. Right up to the last morning, I made myself going even while knowing that they were probably going to shut down the gym later in the afternoon. But, I didn’t want to to miss my last chance to get a work out in. That exercise was important to me.
I figured if I could get that one last work out in then I would only miss a couple of weeks at most. They would close things down for a little while, while we got a hold of this virus, and then I would be able to jump right back in. I told myself that I wouldn’t even notice and that it might have even been good for me to give my knees and body a short little break like that. I, like all of you , had no idea that this little shutdown would last the many months that it has.
Now my gym is open and has been for three months, but I haven’t been back. Not once! I might have kept going to the last minute, but I haven’t jumped in on the first minute or first months. It just isn’t that important right now. I don’t want to risk going into a building where people are sweating and breathing heavy, only to sweat and breath heavy myself and share that air. It just does not make sense to me when we have a virus that thrives in respiratory droplets!
It is interesting how my view of things has changed. What was so important to me before isn’t as important. What I would make an effort to do doesn’t get the same effort. My habits were changed and so it would appear my values have changed as well. Going to the gym was something I valued, it was important to me and I would shape my day around it. Yet, things changed during the pandemic. Its not that exercise isn’t important to me anymore, its just that right now it is not centered in a gym routine. I have found ways to gain that exercise at home.
On the surface, it would appear that my values have shifted – I am not going to the gym and that was very important to me. But, what is true is that I have had to find a new way to live out the value of taking care of my body and gaining the exercise that I need to remain healthy. It took me a while to figure that out, but I am getting in the routine again. I had to make myself do it.
So, in this article, I am challenging you to examine your life before and during COVID. Were there things that you were doing that were very important to you that you are not doing anymore? Did your prayer patterns change? Community engagement? Physical exercise? Are you still doing the things that give you life? Have relationships that you care deeply become more difficult to tend? How can you compare these things and measure them? I hope that you have written out a rule of life at some point (if you don’t know what that is please ask me). Now is a great time to review that and see if COVID has knocked you out of some patterns and values that are important. You might discover that you need to recommit to those things that you value and make an effort to get back to doing what you can do to really be you!
We will be examining values again as a church and exploring those things that we say we value at the church. I am launching a sermon series this week that will be called “Value Challenge” because those things that we value as a church have been challenged. I have subtitled the series as “High touch people in a low touch world.” We have shaped our church around community about being “high touch.” But, now with COVID we aren’t able to do that. We can’t hug, we can’t really even see each other behind our masks. These are challenges to our way of life.
This happens across our values. Our commitment to growing in our understanding and practice of diversity becomes more difficult when we aren’t face to face with people who are different than us. How about our ability to love each other, to be honest with each other and to pursue depth in our relationship with God and each other? I hope we will notice that our living out of these values might not look exactly like they did before (e.g. going to the gym) but that we are still doing what is important (exercising). I also hope that we will see some places where we are not living into our values and we will make a change!
Join with me in exploring our values and our ability to live them out!
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