Last week, Focus on the Family ran two interviews on my book Every Body Matters, which explores the connection between body care and Christian discipleship. You can find the interviews HERE.
This week’s excerpt from that book discusses the need for tough Christians, focusing on the life of Jeremiah. We could be facing some tough times. Developing a disciplined soul (which can be helped through disciplining our bodies) could well be not a luxury, but a necessity in order for us to be faithful witnesses in an increasingly hostile world.
The T-ball player connected with the baseball, launching a white missile that stopped when it hit my six-year-old son’s forehead, who happened to be playing second base.
Graham dropped like he had been hit by a sledgehammer. I ran out to the infield, next to the coach. “Are you all right, bud?” I asked.
Graham nodded his head. “I think so.”
I could already see the knot forming just above his left eye. Graham started to get up, and the coach said, “Here, we’ll help you off the field and put Tyler in.”
“No,” Graham protested. “Tyler lets the balls go by. We can still win this game. I can play.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I looked at the coach, who shrugged his shoulders and said, “Graham’s better groggy than Tyler is clearheaded, so if it’s OK with you …”
The coach and I patted Graham on the back, and I returned to the bench, feeling very proud thoughts, saying to myself, “This is so cool; I’ve got a really tough son! Who knew?”
When a kid is just five or six years old, untested, you really don’t know, and I couldn’t have been happier with life in general until, on my way back to the bench, I caught my wife’s gaze.
Read this blog on Substack HERE.