When I was a kid in school, I loved recess, almost as much as I love reading. I loved the merry-go-round, when I ran as fast as I could go, pushing it around and round, and then jumped on to ride. I loved to ride bikes, racing down the street with the wind blowing in my hair. I got my first bicycle for my 8th birthday, a used girl’s bike that Mama bought for $10 from the neighbor girl up the street.
Most of the time though all I did was read. I devoured every book I found. I read at least 3 books a week from the library in addition to school-assigned reading. I read the writing on the back of the cereal box while I ate breakfast. I read as we drove along the highway going to my grandpa’s house.
Recently I took my 11-year-old grandson with me to a doctor’s appointment and when the doctor asked me what I did for recreation, I had to stop to think for a minute, but my grandson piped up, “Facebook, Mimi.”
I work on computers for other people. I watch TV while I play around on the computer and read my email and communicate on Facebook but I wonder. Is my only recreation Facebook? Pretty sad, isn’t it?
I read the Bible on my computer, too. I also have the Bible on my cell phone and on my new Kindle Fire, but I have at least 10 real leather Bibles of different translations. Reading is one of my recreations too—reading the Bible and other books, but my grandson considers that as schoolwork or part of my work as a writer, and not enjoyment.
There is a balance though. Paul himself said, “For bodily exercise profits a little: but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” I Timothy 4:8.
Exercising the physical body has value, but we must pump our spiritual muscles too so they won’t shrivel up and waste away to nothing.