It had been a few months since I’d consistently been able to run. A hamstring injury that I was too impatient to let heal properly had sidelined me for longer than I wanted. Now I was ready to begin again but I didn’t want to aggravate the injury and deal with another setback. My sabbatical was, at that point, still a couple of months ahead of me and I really wanted to be able to run as often as possible. One of the joys of a Swedish summer is running through a forest and when I had all the time in the world to do that I wasn’t going to miss it.

Still knowing my own impatience and tendency to push too hard too soon I opted for a method of training called Maximum Aerobic Function (MAF). Basically it’s running to your Heart rate. You take a big number 180, which is your heart rate when you’re really working hard, sprinting as hard as you can for example. Then you take away another number, your age. In my case that was 48 which made me pause to wonder how on earth that number had gotten so big. Anyway 180-48 = 132. There are a few tweaks here and there to the formula but that was basically it, 132 was my magic number. And what that meant was no running where your heart goes over 132. If it does, you have to slow down till your heart rate comes down.

I strapped on a newly purchased heart rate monitor and set off to do a benchmark 5km. I’m used to running 5km but I wasn’t used to running them this slowly. I would jog, look at my watch and see my heart rate was way over 132. Slow down. Nope, slow down some more. Darn it, still too fast, and I’d have to walk. This first run was agony because for me it was so slow, twice as slow as what I knew I had been capable of. It was shocking to me how quickly my heart rate spiked. I wasn’t nearly as fit as I thought.

Once you get past these agonisingly slow runs your heart begins to operate in this aerobic zone and operate more efficiently. My times dropped as my pace increased but I was never working any harder than on that first run, everything was still at 132. I was recovering faster, getting fitter, losing weight, gaining speed and my heart wasn’t working any harder than on that first painfully slow run. Amazing. I was sold, I’m a MAF evangelist now – I’m living in the good of what it has done to my heart.

But hills were still a nuisance. Every small incline and rise no matter how small and I’d have to walk. For months. Awful. My heart it seemed was incredibly sensitive to every slight variation in the incline. By now I was on sabbatical and then it hit me. My heart, and by that I didn’t just mean the amazing blood and oxygen pump in my chest, but my heart was also in serious need of the same sort of recovery and fitness plan.

I was not as fit as I thought. I noticed the hills, the bumps, the inclines. I needed to slow down for a while in order that if I stuck to the plan I could run further and faster but without working my heart harder. This metaphor really spoke to me, God used something ordinary but that I was committed to and could see the value of to communicate to me something even more important. He cared enough about the state of my heart to slow me down, show me the difference and point me towards a more healthy future. He wanted me working in the right zone. I could find dozens of ways that this analogy made sense to me.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life

Proverbs 4:23 (ESV)

Interestingly during my runs, and often on the hillier sections where I would have to slow right down or walk, then a person or situation would come to mind that had hurt, that has left a mark on my soul and at those points I’d simply ask God to forgive me and then forgave them. God was healing my heart, lightening the load, helping me to run.

Over time, as the number of things that needed doing increased, as the church grew, as the complexity of multiple languages, cultures, services, meetings, ideas grew I simply stopped being vigilant to my heart. I was unaware of or perhaps better said, too numbed to know what to do about it, that my heart was in need of some rest, recovery and refreshment.

Of course even if you give your heart all those things it doesn’t mean the springs of life will flow again. For that you have to go to God, to the Gospel, to Jesus and His Spirit and spend time in their presence ask them to clear the path for their life to again flow through my heart. And as I’ve run, as I’ve paid attention with all vigilance to my heart, I’m trusting that the water of life is flowing more freely in my heart again.

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