Cycling ll Christian walk - a lesson

There's a shocking lack of blogging about my latest obsession: Cycling.

I. Am. Obsessed.

I've been cycling since December, and I'm now a keen spandex wearer, proud cycling tan-ner, and my eyes glaze over with joy when I meet another cyclist. I even started spinning (yes, in the gym) because winter came and I had to keep on cycling, whatever it took. How far the anti-gym-bunny has come.

Spinning/ cycling has been good for my relationship with God in many ways. Sitting on a bike for so long means that inevitably I have lengthy chats with God, or just general reflection time. Sitting on a bike for so long means I inevitably turn to God in prayer out of desperation (as irreverent as that sounds, the last hill is always a killer), or in praise for what our bodies are capable of and the beautiful surroundings I find myself in.

Cycling has also proved itself to be useful as a fruitful comparison to the Christian walk. It's hard work, takes discipline, is a pleasure, brings people together, is best undertaken in encouraging communities etcetc. These are all topics I'll probably write on in the future, but there's one particular topic that I had a revelation about recently so I thought I'd write about that.

Now the curious thing about cycling in the first few months was that I never lost weight. In fact, I think I gained a few kgs, even in the weeks I was doing 7-10 hours a week. That's a lot, anyone will tell you, and especially if you've gone from doing no exercise the last two years to doing this amount! When my cycling partner would tell me of the kgs he'd lost, I'd wonder in complete stupefaction as to how I was gaining when I did double the amount of training he did. We both clicked how this was possible a few weeks later when at a restaurant for supper. I polished off my pizza, whereas he only ate half.

Ahah! A clue!

I observed my eating patterns over the next few weeks, and came to the following conclusion: Already someone who ate a lot, I was eating even more than usual. Fair dinkum, I probably needed the extra energy, but alarmingly, because I was telling myself I was burning up hectic calories, my usually healthy eating plans were out of the window, and I was eating tons of junk food. Burgers, pizzas, pastries, sweet stuff- all things I usually ate in moderation were becoming everyday occurrences. In other words, me doing well in one aspect of healthy living (exercising) made me completely lax in another aspect of healthy living (eating). [I learnt my lesson after a few health issues, though.]

Processing this episode made me wonder - how often do we take a similar approach to our Christian lives? Just because we're doing one thing well, do we tend to pat ourselves on the back and ease off on other matters? Because we've been kind, gracious, patient in one circumstance, do we tell ourselves it's okay to be harsh, unloving, selfish in the next second? This is not to say that God doesn't have grace for us when we slip up - He does, and immeasurably so. This is also not to say that we need to be 100% perfect the whole time. Yet, I came to see through this incident that a danger I see in myself is becoming complacent and thinking that doing well in one area means I'm doing well in my whole Christian walk. Let's watch out for thinking like this :)