My friend Bobby texted me, asking for prayer. We’ve been close friends for twenty-five years. Bobby’s one of those guys you can reconnect with after months of absence and pick up where you left off, like you talked just the other day.
Bobby informed me that lifting all those heavy squats had finally caught up with him; he was having a hip replacement.
I thought back. Back to the days when we would lift heavy at the gym. Bobby was a stoutly built, barrel-chested, rugged police officer. Whenever I patted him on the back, “hey, buddy,” he felt solid, nothing but muscle, like a racehorse. Bobby was one of those police officers I would never have wanted to encounter if I were on the wrong side of the law.
He was also one of those rare individuals who acted with courageous calm in tough situations and walked with unwavering integrity. I smiled when Bobby and his wife, Vicky, joined the church I pastored in Louisiana.
Their ministry in God’s Kingdom continued after I moved and has touched many lives through the years.
I wasn’t surprised that once Bobby retired from the police force, he earned first a Bachelor’s, then a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering. He spent years working for an oil company in Houston, TX.
And he kept lifting weights and training all the while.
“It’s the end of an era,” I texted him back, “the King of Squats has finally gone down,” I teased, imagining the seemingly endless stack of 45-pound weights he would load on the squat rack.
While I was never a power lifter, I always suspected my lifting heavy weights (heavy at least for me) contributed to my rotator cuff surgery several years ago.
Our bodies break down, no matter what we do to avoid it. Too much here, and we pay a price. Too little there, and we atrophy. I’ve seen a picture on the internet of a person who looks fantastic, with what appears to be a thirty-five-year-old body and a 75-year-old face. I suspect AI, since invariably, there’s a magic potion for sale with the picture.
Then there’s the pic of an ancient-looking person with the caption, “Teaching is great,’ says Joe, age thirty, who just celebrated his fifth year of teaching elementary school.”
The Bible doesn’t hide our age. It commends it.
Proverbs reminds us that gray hair is a crown of glory, gained in a righteous life.
One of my favorite Scriptures is from Psalm 71: “O God, you have taught me from my youth, And I still declare Your wondrous deeds. And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, Until I declare Your strength to this generation.”
The Apostle Paul, writing to young Timothy, gives us the right balance: physical training has some value, he said, but godliness holds value for all things. Paul wasn’t dismissing the body; he was setting the right priorities. The body is a temple, worth caring for, but never worth worshipping. We take care, but do not idolize it. Every creak, every surgical scar, every replaced joint is simply the honest ledger of a life fully lived.
My friend, Bobby, is recovering well after his surgery. He may not squat 500 pounds again, but then again, he might. I wouldn’t put anything past him.
What I know for certain is that the same quiet strength that carried him through two college degrees and two careers, and decades of iron-stacked barbells, is not stored in a hip joint. It runs deeper than muscle and bone. The Lord, the psalmist wrote, “is the strength of my life — of whom shall I be afraid?” Bobby knows that. The weights were never his foundation; they were just one expression of the discipline he brought to everything.
The era of the King of Squats may be shifting. But the Kingdom he serves is not.