Today I went for a swim at the
gym and struggled up and down the pool for 15 minutes.
The last time I went for a swim I
swam for a mile and then kept going for the fun of it.
The problem is that was 9 years
ago and in the intervening period I had lost a lot of fitness and got older so
what was easy then is hard work now.
The other odd thing about my
swimming now is that I mainly do a lazy breaststroke and I struggled down a
length of backstroke before I wore myself out trying a length of front crawl –
not helped by messing up my breathing and trying to take a breathe in with my
face under water!!! The odd thing is
breaststroke was the last stroke I mastered having started by managing a width
of ‘crawl’ (doggy paddle?) aged 10 and mastering backstroke a year later. As far as I remember (and this is a long time
ago) I had actually swum a width butterfly before I could manage breaststroke
but now it seems to be the only way I can swim.
This strange turn of events got
me thinking (always dangerous) about the way things change as we go through
life; what was once easy becomes hard and what was hard becomes second
nature. That is the way life is and it
would be very odd if we were the same at 50 (OK – nearer 60) as at 20.
The really odd thing is how many
Christians try to remain in a teenage faith as they get older and how the
church does very little to encourage Christians to grow and develop their
faith. Having spent most of my life in
an evangelical church I have often wondered about the number of young
Christians who drift away from the Church as they move into their late teens
and early 20s and now I think I know why – the church doesn’t show them how to
grow up in their faith so they leave it behind as something they have outgrown.
To prevent this happening
Churches have to enable young Christians to grow into a mature faith that
doesn’t rely on feelings and music but enables them to deal with doubt and
disappointment.
