Three years ago today I was doing that thing that so many of us do in the aftermath of the festive season. I was looking at my belly. It was not a pretty sight. So I did that other thing that so many of us do at New Year: I resolved to Do Something About It.
I started with the hard work of flicking through gym websites full of beautiful, fit, happy people. Beautiful fit, happy, rich people – because gym membership was not a small investment.
So, as an alternative, I turned to things I could do for free and realised that since I possessed a pair of trainers, some shorts and a t-shirt, I could conceivably go for a run. And too my infinite and continuing surprise, the next day I did. I was nearly sick. Never mind sick, I thought I was going to die. But I went again, and then again, until it became something approaching a habit.
Now, I don’t find anything spiritual in running. Some people do but when I run, I don’t feel cleansed, energised or liberated. I don’t feel connected to the universe. Mostly I still feel a bit sick. After three years I’m a little lighter and a little fitter but it’s not an especially profound transformation.
It strikes me, though, that the kind of transformation some of us crave at New Year, often does go deeper than a slightly flatter belly. We want a fresh start inside and out – a change of heart as well as body.
Christians believe that that sort of change requires help from God – and that it is accessible to everyone. St Paul was utterly transformed by an encounter with Jesus and, later on, he wrote that ‘if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation – the old has passed away’.
Becoming a new creation is incredibly appealing – to leave behind not only the mistakes of overeating and drinking too much, but also all the other things that we’d rather we hadn’t done. But it’s also incredibly hard to achieve. So I reckon that at this time of serial resolutions and, all too often, serial failure, it’s good to know that, unlike going out in the cold to pound the pavements of Peckham or Pontefract, we don’t have to do it all on our own.
I still run, just about. The picture is a recent trot around South London.