She looked at me through glasses perched on her narrow nose.
She raised a lighted cigarette to her thin lips, took a draw, expelled some
smoke, and said, “It goes if you push it.”
She was/is right, in lots of ways. How things “go” often
involve how we “push.”
Some things happen that we don’t control, but many things
depend on our “push” in order to get stuff moving in a right direction.
Take me, for example: I stayed up late last night and woke
up, today, around six a.m. but decided I needed more sleep. When I woke up
around nine a.m., I felt as though I was in a fog. I seemed addled. I had been
sleeping, as they say, like a log. I guess a log is heavy and lies pretty still
in the forest.
As I lay on my bed, I thought, “I need to sit up, stand up,
and head to the bathroom. I just can’t lie here and ‘think’ myself ready.” I
have a body and can’t live just in my mind, or not much will get done.
The Bible indicates that humans are each made up of a body,
a soul, and a spirit. Someone said that if any two of those components agree
about doing something, each person will do the thing the prevailing two
components agree on.
That idea seems to be a takeoff on some words that Jesus
said, recorded in this verse:
“Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about
anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in
heaven” (Matthew 18:19 NASB).
OK, so I was lying in the bed, and I said to myself, “I need
to get up.”
My spirit and soul agreed that I needed to get up, but my
body was sassing back, saying, “No, I want to lie here in this nice bed. Leave
me alone. Wa-a-a, wa-a-a.”
My spirit and soul agreed about rising from the bed, though
my soul seemed a little weak and wanted to side with my body. My old body
started moving but was whining, “No, no, I don’t wanna go!”
So, here I am, sitting at my computer. My body is still
whining a good bit, but it’s under control, I reckon, for the time being.
