F3 Knoxville

A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall

Asylum AM

THE SCENE:  Thunderstorms, plenty of rain and lightening.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:

We had to make a mad dash to the northern ball fields pavilion as we were getting started, due to rain and lightening.  It was full of people so we made another dash to the outdoor chapel and worked out there.  We did plank stretches and then got to “Tha-thang”.
THA-THANG:
Totem poles doing each exercise for 30 seconds before going to the next one.  In round one we do the first exercise only.  In round 2 we do the first and second.  In round 3 we do the first, second and third.  We keep going until all five exercises are done.  Then we drop off the first exercise and do only exercises two through five.  Next we drop the second exercise and do only three through five.  We do this until only the fifth exercise is done.  The following are the exercises:

  • Burpees
  • American Hammers
  • Decline Merkins
  • Bench lifts
  • Squat Jacks

Next, we did four corners, performing 20 Little Baby Crunches at each corner.  We hopped from corner one to two, Bernie Sanders Sprinted from two to three, bear crawled from three to four, and sprinted from four to one.  Next we repeated the above routine except did 15 Big Boy Sit-Ups at each corner

Next we did another totem pole but this time with only four exercises.  They were:

  • Squat Jacks
  • Flutter Kicks
  • Hello Dollies
  • Mountain Climbers

COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
We had ten men present including a Flying EH whom we named Nick.  We gave him the F3 name of Stormy.
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

1 Corinthians 15:55-57 King James Version (KJV)

55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We tend to avoid thoughts of death.  We rather not think about it.  In many ways, we fear death.  And whether we fear death or not, we certainly don’t want to die and rarely think of our own deaths.  Yet, there can be advantages to thinking of our own mortality.

  1. We see how precious our time here on Earth is and it can motivate us to act more like HIM’s with the time we have here.  And we appreciate our mortality more.  As Bob Geldof says in one of his songs, Mortality is a cheap price we pay for existence.”
  2. We are forced to think of life beyond this existence.  We are forced to wonder about God, about His creation and whether God has plans for us beyond our lives here.
  3. We have a better understanding of our dependency on God.  We must trust in God, that God indeed does have plans for us.  As Henri Nouwen states, we come into this world as a dependent creature and leave life as a dependent creature.  And, if we can trust that God exists and that He has plans for us beyond our lives here, then . . .
  4. We fear death less.  We realize that, although Mortality is a cheap price we pay for existence” our existence is more than our lives here.  If we can trust in God, we need not fear death but welcome it.  Just as, when we were in the womb, we did not know what our lives outside of it would be like, we do not know what our lives beyond what we have on Earth will be.  But, with God, “Death, where is your sting?”  With God, as John Donne says, “Death, thou shalt die.”