new exercise room in the future

The condo association has approved turning a basement store-room into an exercise room. I'm thrilled at the idea of being able to work out in the morning before my day begins. If I run on the treadmill in my condo, I'm sure it sounds like a heard of thundering elephants in the unit below.

But in the basement, it shouldn't be a problem for anyone. They still need to run electricity down there, so it won't happen right away, but at least the process has begun! My dad has access to some enormous mirrors that will keep it from looking TOO much like a closet, and we'll paint it, and maybe put up a ceiling fan. I'm most pleased with this development. :)

I'm also doing the newsletter for the condo association, and I worked on that last night. It's the first newsletter I've done where I had the opportunity to gather the matrial myself. Usually I'm just formatting someone else's stuff ... it's been great fun looking around and trying to find things that might interest the neighbors.

I got to the gym and lifted weighs last night. It's still packed with the New-Years'-resolution crowd. I wonder if it's a sin to look forward to the time they'll start slipping? They're young and skinny, so it won't do them any real HARM. :)

I was reading last night in Deuteronomy 5. (I'm still using the Reese Chronological Bible, by the way, and liking it - it arranges all the events and writing in chronological order, and has estimated dates at the top ... makes it very easy to keep your history straight.)

I was thinking about where God instituted the sabbath:

12 ‘Observe the sabbath day to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you.

13 ‘Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

14 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

15 ‘You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.

It's interesting to me that the reason He gave for their sabbath was that they were delivered from Egypt. They needed to rest in order to remember that GOD was the one keeping them safe and secure, not themselves.

The Lord Jesus is described as OUR "sabbath rest" - we don't have a physical day anymore. We have a person. And when we look to Him, we remember that we, too, were delivered from captivity. I was every bit as much a prisoner, with no hope of release, as those Jews were as they labored on Pharoah's work projects. I was serving a cruel master also.

And my deliverance was something I could never have accomplished. It was all done for me, and offered up to me as a gift. All I had to do was step forward and accept it, as they had to take that first step out into the dessert so many centuries ago.

Thankful to be free!
Trinka