Here's a brief selection from an email I sent to Wendy today. The context is my own thoughts about being health-conscious.

That's cool and all, but I was struck by a frustrating irony. I read the Abs Diet book for about an hour last night, taking notes and designing my workout. That's good, right? Well, yeah, except that I'd just finished delivering a sermon about human excellence and PRIORITIES. I actually woke up this morning thinking about the Abs Diet--not about how I could love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. Still, through some combination of factors, I am in a really good mood, and that has led to my being fairly loving toward my students, so that's a plus.

This was Wendy's wise reply:

About priorities, I'll reiterate something we've said before, and that is that feeling tension between your fleshly self and your spiritual self is a good thing. Yay that it even occurred to you that something might be in danger of becoming too much of a priority.

That said, it doesn't seem to me that it _has_ become too much of a priority. As long as your health prospects (and any other prospects you have) can contribute to your ultimate goal of living for God, then do your best at those prospects. Maybe a way to make sure they're not getting in the way is to pray earnestly that they will somehow bring glory to God. It may seem like a trite sort of prayer because you're asking for something so seemingly unspecific, but on the contrary, I think it's an important one and one that is unspecific because we really can't know how God would be willing to answer it. All of this is to say that we can trust God to help us make good out of our earthly decisions. Does that make any sense?

Do you guys have any thoughts about earthly priorities and where they fit into a Christian's life? To address Michael's post--if one is a lawyer, how much effort/energy should one devote to being a lawyer? Is it even right to care about one's weight, re: Matt 6:25? It may be that this is a discussion that has come up before, perhaps even often before, but it's one that continues to confuse me. Please feel free to comment, or bring your thoughts to house church tomorrow night--Blur has promised to be especially loud.