Spiritual Health is Connected to Physical Health

According to the news, those of us who are privileged to live in Douglas County live in the healthiest county in the state of Colorado. Nearly every day, I see someone walking, running, riding a bike.

Here’s a tip: If you see me running, do me a favor and don’t call an ambulance. Call the police: I’m probably being chased.

Rather than give workout tips, I’m more interested in the spiritual benefits of taking care of our physical bodies through exercise, good diet, and rest. Here’s why:

Our physical health and spiritual health are connected.

We tend to think of our physical bodies as separate from our spiritual identity. How does God see things? In his eyes, they are connected.

In a modern world, we may be tempted to see ourselves as simply machines. We certainly have machine-like qualities such as the ability to do math in our heads and lift heavy objects. We have internal systems designed to regulate our temperature.

But we are more than a collection of neurons and blood cells.

We have a shared oneness with our Creator that connects our physical body with his spiritual reality.

Now let me ask you … How would you feel if you saw someone vandalizing a holy place like a church or synagogue? Would it make you a bit angry? Would it motivate you to do something?

Yet, how often do we fail to treat our bodies as the spiritual temples God designed them to be?

According to biblical wisdom, our choices matter. Let me share a personal story as we draw this to a close.

When my mother was in her late forties, she was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. As many people of her generation, she had started smoking as a teenager – long before Surgeon General warnings.

By the time science had connected smoking to various cancers, my mother was deep into addiction.

Since I was only ten years-old at the time of her double mastectomy, I honestly don’t remember if she had tried to quit before then. What I do remember is how the cancer was a game-changer.

Following the surgery, the doctor gave her two options: keep smoking and it will kill you or stop. To my mom’s credit, she stopped cold turkey and never smoked again.

That was almost forty years ago but I learned a very important lesson: your daily choices and habits will either improve or harm your life.

If the way you behave is not adding to your quality of life, it is most certainly subtracting from it.

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