There's a Meditation Anywhere

In a hectic schedule it's nice to find little opportunities to stop and reflect. My faith, being important to me, is the first thing I turn to. Finding time to meditate on a mystery of the faith is challenging, but there are little moment of reflection that can be inserted in a routine all the time. Three times a week I go to Curves to exercise. But even there I have found a reminder to remember. After working on the machines, there is a corner you can go to to do some stretching exercises to cool down. A chart on the wall pictures all of the exercises. The first three are for the legs, but the next five are for the arms. I've always had wimpy arms. Combine that with low blood pressure and raising your arms over your head for different stretches, and I find the simplest of all the arm exercises particularly excruciating. It is the last one, and my limbs are screaming to be lowered to my sides. All I have to do is stretch them out wide for thirty little seconds, but it is agony... until I remember that Christ's arms were stretched out on the cross for hours. Nails held him there and the full weight of his body pressed down on those wounds. He didn't complain or cry out. He endured. For my thirty seconds of puny agony I think about his pain. It's not much, but it is worth every second. I can't do those stretches now without remembering the cross and all that was done for me on it. Who would have thought that Curves, of all places, would be a place of meditation--but when our hearts are always seeking him, he finds us even on the treadmill.