JCK-at-large SITE

I had a knee that was giving me a little trouble and decided to do some knee bends.  I like to put a Swiss Ball behind my back and roll it up and down the wall.  Nice gentle bend at the knee, add a 5lb weight if you are keen. 

Then I saw this guy on YouTube.  “Squats are the best exercise as we get older,” he  said.  “Squats strengthen your core… very good for knees and hips… overall balance.” 

I followed him along for a bit, but I wasn’t getting very far. Down.   

“Maybe you’re not doing it right,” he said, as though he was watching me.  “Try widening your stance like this…. try pointing your feet outward into more of a V-shape.”  

I was giving that a try when a piercing pain struck my better knee like a whack from a machete — the ‘better knee’ which would now be propped up for a week, wrapped in ice packs.  Heavy strength Tylenol on the side.

“I can’t believe it,” I said to my unofficial Trainer.  “I was doing everything right.”

“Just stick with the Swiss Ball,” she said.” “Small of the back, roll it up and down the wall…. and stay away from those You Tube Videos.”

Looking for another opinion, and with some time on my hands, I repaired to the Book of Hebrews: “Strengthen the feeble knees.”  Whatever the author meant by this, I knew what he did did not mean! 

 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your feeble knees…make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed (12:11-13).

This sounded perfect.  Here were people in danger of losing their entire ‘walk’ unless they firmed up the knees!  It was a call to toughen up, to persevere through the hard times: 

In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (4-7).

This sounded hard core.  To lapse was to lose everything! 

Of course, of course, the “perseverance of the saints” band do some knee bends of their own to prove these hearers never really ‘had’ a genuine faith.  But, with great respect to John Calvin, I think they miss the point.  Nothing could be clearer in Hebrews than the great stakes involved in not falling back.  “Do you think we can really risk neglecting this magnificent salvation?” (MSG). As the venerable Wesleyan Adam Clark put it,

Why should he exhort a believer to persevere, if it be impossible for him to fall away? What contemptible quibbling have men used to maintain a false and dangerous tenet against the whole tenor of the word of God!

Duly chastened, I resolved to persevere through the pain.  I was soon back on the treadmill, low-speed — one tensor brace wrapping the feeble knee.

Only this time I needed two!