I have been thinking about signs of healthiness. I am trying to write an article for the YFC supporters magazine, IntoView, and I need a lot more inspiration at the moment. It’s only 500 words – which I think makes the task a little tougher!

On Sunday at the Tate Modern, Sarah made an interesting observation. As we looked out of the magnificent Tate window across the city to St Paul’s and beyond, Sarah drew my attention to the amazing number of tall cranes there were dotted around the skyline. A massive amount of building is going on. The London skyline, which probably stayed fairly constant for a very long time, is continually changing and it is quite hard to remember the landscape without the London Eye, the Gherkin or Canary Wharf. Sarah’s observation was that things must be quite healthy, and that people with the money must feel quite confident to be willing to fund this level of building.

I guess Sarah is right. If something is healthy, the natural outcome of that must be growth. Healthy things grow, they cannot help it. It is just what happens. If something is unhealthy is stays static, then withers, then dies.

We have an example of this at home at the moment. I have two bonsais. One is healthy and growing like crazy. The other is poorly and no matter what I do, it seems to be dieing on me. I want it to grow, but it seems no matter what I do, it won’t – namely because it is no longer a healthy specimen.

I think in Christian ministry we look for growth, expect growth, and want growth but often try to achieve that without putting in the hard graft that is necessarily associated with being healthy. Healthiness needs personal care, attention to detail, planning of time, balanced diets, exercise and all that kind of stuff. Healthiness does not usually happen by chance – or does it?

Is there a difference in how we achieve a physical healthiness and a spiritual healthiness? Or do both need the same principles of diet, exercise, balance to flourish?

I wonder, too, whether we can sometimes try too hard. I would suggest that in my spiritual life that it is in my trying that I lose focus on what I am about. Spirituality becomes an aim, rather than a relationship with Creator God. When I realise I am no longer trying hard to pray each day, or study the Bible that my relationship with God is healthier because I naturally spend time with God in my everyday stuff. A result of that health is that I want to pray and spend time in scripture.

Essentially what I am trying to say is that I long to have a healthy relationship with my creator, rather than a disciplined way of doing things on a regular basis – such as daily prayer or bible study. A relationship that results in a disciplined approach, rather than a disciplined approach trying to cause a relationship to develop.