losing weight[s]

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:1-2

This morning I was reading a commentary on Hebrews 12 by F.B. Meyer and ran into some potent reflections on the idea of weights we foolishly carry around with us. Here's some of what Meyer says:

No man would think of maintaining a high speed encompassed with weights. The lads who run for a prize litter the course with garments flung away in their eager haste. There would be little difficulty in maintaining an intense and ardent spirit if we were more faithful in dealing with the habits and indulgences which cling around us and impede our steps.

Thousands of Christians are like water-logged vessels. They cannot sink; but they are so saturated with inconsistencies and worldliness and permitted evil that they can only be towed with difficulty into the celestial port.

Meyer points out that this idea of "weights" is not the same as sin. A weight, he says, can be "something which others account harmless, and permit, and in which you once saw no cause for anxiety, but which you now look on with a feeling of self-condemnation."

It may be a friendship which is too engrossing; a habit which is sapping away our energy as the tap-root the fruit bearing powers of a tree; a pursuit, an amusement, a pastime, a system of reading, a method of spending time, too fascinating and absorbing, and therefore harmful to the soul -- which is tempted to walk when it should run, and to loiter when it should haste.

-- from F.B. Meyer on Hebrews, published in Parallel Classic Commentary on the New Testament: Calvin (Mark Water, ed.)

Hard words, eh?

What are your weights?