Take Care Of Yourself

 

I’ve talked with thousands of patients about their health and how to best improve or maintain it. I’ve noticed a change in attitudes over the years. Early on, many people expressed a desire to be as healthy as possible in order to take care of others, most commonly their children but sometimes their spouse, parents, or others in their family. Fewer and fewer people have expressed this attitude as time has gone on. It’s possible that this phenomenon is not typical of our society as a whole but I suspect it is. We have been drifting towards “me first” for awhile and that doesn’t appear to be about to change.

 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, our life itself is a gift from God.  Everything we have, everything  we can do, is through the grace of God.  We may think that the condition of our bodies is just a physical matter, but there is a spiritual dimension to it as well. Our body is a gift from God. How we take care of it reflects on our relationship with God. We have a responsibility to God and to our family and others in the way we care for ourselves. “For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord.” (Rom 14:7-8).

 

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Cor 6:19-20). The context for this passage is about avoiding immorality, but I think it is equally applicable to caring for our health. If we do not properly care for the body that God has given us, we may fall short in doing the tasks set before us in this life.

 

This doesn’t mean that God is calling all of us to be vegan and go to the gym five times per week, any more than He is calling us to sell everything we own and go off into the mission field.  He does want us to place our care for our bodies before Him in prayer, as we should be doing with every aspect of our lives. Then, we should listen to what He says to us and obey.