Meditation on the Importance of God's Word

By Dennis Edwards:YouTube Link

Good morning. Today's meditation moment is going to be on the Word of God. These are 14 different verses of the importance of God's Word. The first one is John 1:1 & 14.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

God became flesh in Jesus Christ and He dwelt among us. Jesus is the Word of God. You want to know Jesus? Then you need to study His words. See what He said. Read His words. We know one another through our words. Our words, Jesus said, 

the words I speak unto you they are Spirit and they are life.[John 6:63]

You see our words reveal our real inner self and we know each other through our words. There used to be a saying

A man a is as good as his word.

Words are real things. They lift up or they knock down. They bless or they curse. Jesus said we'll give account for every idle word. So words identify us And God's Word identify's Him. And God's Word was manifested in Jesus. He's the Word of God. And Jesus said in Matthew 4:4,

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

You see a man isn't just a flesh being. You know it's not just eat, drink and be merry without spiritual fulfillment. Mankind is searching for spiritual input to satisfy his weary soul and it's found in God's Word. But what's happening is so many times the Pharisaical religious people have made the Word of God of none effect through their traditions.[1] 

In Psalm 119:11 it says,

Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.

The Word is the standard by which we judge what is true and what is false. Psalm 119:130 says,

The entrance of Thy Words gives light: it gives understanding unto the simple.

God's Word gives us light. It helps us to understand things. It helps us to get the big picture. Paul said to Timothy,

Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth.[2]

You've got to study to know God's will. You've got to study to know God's mind. Paul told us to put on the mind of Christ. [3] But how can we put on the mind of Christ unless we study, unless we read His words. Matthew 24:35, Jesus said,

Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but My Words shall not pass away.

God's Word is not going to pass away. Everything else you're living for is going to pass away. But it's the Word of God that is going to endure forever. Please pick up your Bible and read God's Word. It will give you strength, life, encouragement. It will give you comfort in time of need. It will give you spiritual strength. It will give you verses and stories to share with others, so you can comfort and strengthen others.

Peter says, 1Peter 2:2,

As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby.

As a little child is on his mother's breast, so should we be with God's Word. God's Word should be the most important thing in our life, more than our necessary food. As Job said,

Neither have I gone back from the commandment of His lips, I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.[4]

And people go travelling all over the world, to India, all parts of the world, to try to find spiritual enlightenment. And it's right there in that little book they have in their parent's home. It's right there in that thing called the Holy Bible. If they would just pick it up and read it and get desperate and call out to God and say, "God peak to me, speak to me."

Psalm 119:105 says,

Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

God's Word is a lamp that will help us know where to walk. It will speak to us in those moments when we don't know what to do. And we read God's Word and all of a sudden something that's written there, even though it's talking about something entirely different, it just pops out and speaks to us. And it's just the key to showing us exactly what direction we should take. Are we to do this, or should we do that? Should we say "Yes," or should we say, "No." Should we have the operation or not? God's Word is that light, it's a lamp unto our feet.

And John 15:3, Jesus said,

Now are you clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you.

God's Word cleanses us. It's like taking a shower. You spend time in God's Word and you just feel refreshed. You've had a big struggle, or made a 10 km run and you've gone into the shower and you're showering yourself and all the filth is running off. That's what it's like when you spend time in God's Word.

Notes:

[1] Mark 7:13

[2] 2Timothy 2:15
[3] 1Corinthians 2:16

[4] Job 23:12

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Israeli Lawyer Uses Inside Knowledge Against Settler Group

Associated Press, June 21, 2016

JERUSALEM–A few years ago, Mohammad Abu Ta’a discovered that some storage trailers had disappeared from a plot of land in Jerusalem belonging to his family. Then, the family received a letter informing them they were now trespassers.

When the Palestinian landowner contacted Israeli land authorities, he was told the government had expropriated the land and handed it over to a leading organization that oversees Jewish settlement building in the West Bank. That group, Amana, is now building its new headquarters on the land.

Abu Ta’a is fighting back to expose the shadowy land grab. But he is doing it in an unusual way–enlisting the services of an Israeli lawyer who spent 16 years as a municipal civil servant approving expropriations of Palestinian land in Jerusalem.

The lawyer, Stephen Berman, left his post as legal adviser to the Jerusalem municipality’s real estate department and went into private practice in 2003. He is now using his inside knowledge of the system to expose what he says is the settler group’s illegitimate property grab.

“This was my job, doing this stuff,” the U.S.-born Berman told The Associated Press, recounting from behind his paper-littered desk the expropriations he used to approve. “That was their lack of luck.”

Unlike some Israeli lawyers who fight for Palestinian rights in court, Berman is not an activist for the Palestinian cause. Shortly before he took on this case, he represented a Jewish settlement project in east Jerusalem.

“I don’t care who the law serves,” he said. “I care what the law is.”

Following a paper trail of old maps and land registry documents, Berman said he uncovered how Israeli civil servants, stretching back decades, abused their power to seize control of the tiny but attractive triangle of real estate from the Abu Ta’a family in east Jerusalem and give it to Amana, a 40-year-old organization that spearheads the construction of Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The organization, which has been investigated multiple times for fraudulent real estate deals, has helped plan and build numerous government-sanctioned Jewish settlements and unauthorized outposts.

An investigative program on Israel’s Channel 10 TV in February reported that Israeli police investigated 15 West Bank land acquisitions where settlement outposts were built and found that Amana’s subsidiary had forged documents for 14 of them. The subsidiary denied the claims.

“The Amana organization is a settler organization that deals with construction of settlements … many times on stolen Palestinian land,” said Hagit Ofran of the anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now. “We are not surprised to see them stealing land also in Jerusalem.”

“The trouble here is that the government is helping the settlers to take over this land,” Ofran added.

A lawyer for Amana did not return repeated requests for comment, and reporters on a recent visit to the Abu Ta’as’ plot were ordered out by an Israeli supervisor of the construction site.

Amana fenced off the plot in November and began building. There were no signs identifying the construction project or Amana, as required by law. The Jerusalem Municipality said in a statement that it would ask Amana to put up a sign.

“Having this land is our right,” said Abu Ta’a. “We owned it for a long time, before Israel existed in this land.”

The story began in 1967, when Israel captured and later annexed east Jerusalem, home to some of the city’s holiest religious sites. The following year, to cement the annexation, Israel drew up a plan to expropriate large swaths of vacant Arab-owned territory along the line between east and west Jerusalem.

Some of the expropriated land went into building the Israeli national police headquarters, government ministries and large Jewish neighborhoods, which the international community considers illegal settlements. But some of the land slated for expropriation was left untouched for decades.

In 1989, planning officials approved a final planning scheme for the area. It was smaller than the original expropriation plan, and Abu Ta’a’s plot was left out.

In 1991, the Israel Lands Administration, the government body that manages state-owned lands, declared in a court case that whatever land was needed was part of the new scheme. Berman said that gave the impression that Israel did not intend to take the Abu Ta’a plot.

As the attorney representing the city of Jerusalem, Berman was involved in that court case. When Abu Ta’a and approached him years later, in 2012, after learning his plot of land had been taken, Berman thought something didn’t add up. “I started looking at the facts,” Berman said.

He found that a year after the land authority gave the impression it was no longer interested in taking land in the area, officials quietly began doing the opposite. Eventually, the Abu Ta’a plot was transferred to the settlement group Amana.

Berman found documents showing that in 1992, just after the pro-settlement Likud party lost control of the government to a newly elected left-wing prime minister, the Lands Administration gave permission to Amana to start planning the construction of its headquarters on the Palestinian-owned land.

The lawyer said he believes this was a last-minute effort by pro-settlement land officials to push the land transfer through before then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin could block it. Indeed, when the new government was formed, it froze the deal.

Then in 1997, a year after the pro-settlement Benjamin Netanyahu first became Israeli prime minister, the deal was revived and approved retroactively, Berman said.

At the time, Berman says, Amana secured the necessary approvals by tricking local and national land planning officials into thinking the land was owned by the government. The land authority did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails seeking comment.

But in 2005, when Amana tried to re-parcel the plot, it ran into a snag: the land was still not registered in the government’s name.

To get final approval from Israel’s finance minister, Israel Lands Administration officials “came up with a brilliant idea,” said Berman.

They rezoned the map to make the Palestinian land look like it was connected to nearby government buildings. It made the expropriation look like it was for public reasons, Berman said, and it was approved. Abu Ta’a said his family has refused to accept an offer received in 2012 to apply for compensation.

After five months of court proceedings, a Jerusalem district court in March ruled that the planning scheme was done improperly.

But the judge ruled it was the result of a series of mistakes and stopped short of calling it fraudulent deceit, and therefore ruled that Amana could continue to build its headquarters.

Berman is now appealing to Israel’s Supreme Court.

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Goodbye, Password. Banks Opt to Scan Fingers and Faces Instead.

By Michael Corkery, NY Times, June 21, 2016

The banking password may be about to expire–forever.

Some of the nation’s largest banks, acknowledging that traditional passwords are either too cumbersome or no longer secure, are increasingly using fingerprints, facial scans and other types of biometrics to safeguard accounts.

Millions of customers at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo routinely use fingerprints to log into their bank accounts through their mobile phones. This feature, which some of the largest banks have introduced in the last few months, is enabling a huge share of American banking customers to verify their identities with biometrics. And millions more are expected to opt in as more phones incorporate fingerprint scans.

Other uses of biometrics are also coming online. Wells Fargo lets some customers scan their eyes with their mobile phones to log into corporate accounts and wire millions of dollars. Citigroup can help verify 800,000 of its credit card customers by their voices. USAA, which provides insurance and banking services to members of the military and their families, identifies some of its customers through their facial contours.

Some of the moves reflect concern that so many hundreds of millions of email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers and other personal identifiers have fallen into the hands of criminals, rendering those identifiers increasingly ineffective at protecting accounts. And while thieves could eventually find ways to steal biometric data, banks are convinced they offer more protection.

“We believe the password is dying,” said Tom Shaw, vice president for enterprise financial crimes management at USAA, which is based in San Antonio. “We realized we have to get away from personal identification information because of the growing number of data breaches.”

Long regarded as the stuff of science fiction, biometrics have been tested by big banks for decades, but have only recently become sufficiently accurate and cost effective to use in a big way. It has taken a great deal of trial and error: With many of the early prototypes, a facial scan could be foiled by bad lighting, and voice recognition could be scuttled by background noise or laryngitis.

Before smartphones became ubiquitous, there was an even bigger obstacle: To capture a finger image or scan an eyeball, a bank would have to pay to distribute the necessary technology to tens of millions of customers. A few tried, but their efforts were costly and short-lived.

Today, the equation has changed. Many models of the iPhone have touch pads that can scan fingerprints. The cameras and microphones on many mobile devices are so powerful that they can record the minute details needed to create a biometric ID.

The smartphones also provide an extra layer of security: Many biometric features will only work when used on the specific phone that belongs to the bank account holder.

“If you have your phone and you are authenticating with your fingerprint, it is very likely you,” said Samir Nanavati, a longtime biometrics expert and a founder of Twin Mill, a security software and consulting firm.

The trade-off, of course, is that in the quest for security and convenience, customers are handing over marks of their unique physical identities. After all, it is easy to change a compromised password. But a fingerprint must last forever.

Some bank executives say customers often ask whether their biometric information will become part of a private database, akin to what the F.B.I. keeps.

The banks themselves are not keeping caches of actual fingerprints or eye patterns. Rather, the banks are creating and storing what they call templates–or what amount to long, hard-to-predict numerical sequences–based on a scan of a person’s fingerprint or eyeballs.

It is possible that the thieves could use the biometric templates to steal money, but the banks say they have worked to develop additional safeguards. With some voice authentication systems, banks use certain prompts to prove it is a living customer and not a recording. Many eye scans require customers to blink or move their eyes to prevent a thief from using a photo to gain access.

Wells Fargo has been working with EyeVerify, a start-up in Kansas City, Mo., to develop its eye scan feature, which is being tested with a small group of corporate customers. The technology creates a map of the veins in the whites of an eye.

To log into an account, a customer taps open a Wells Fargo app on a smartphone. When prompted, the customer’s eyes are lined up with a pair of yellow circles on the phone screen. If they match, the customer–typically a chief financial officer or other top executive–gains instant access to the account and can start moving money or conducting other transactions.

Wells Fargo executives said the eye scan could eventually offer an alternative to the authentication system used for corporate accounts, which involves physical tokens that generate numeric pass codes every few seconds. Although generally considered secure, these tokens can be a hassle to carry around.

For now, Wells Fargo is offering eye scans–among the most foolproof biometric technologies, according to security experts–only to select corporate customers, for whom the stakes are arguably higher because there is potentially so much money involved.

“It is harder to take someone’s eyeball than someone’s user ID and password,” said Steve Ellis, who leads Wells Fargo’s innovation group that worked on developing the eye scan authentication. The bank also made an investment in EyeVerify.

Instead of eye scans, Bank of America has embraced fingerprints. Since it began offering the option in September, about 33 percent of the bank’s 20 million mobile banking customers have started using a fingertip to get into their accounts.

There are limits, though, on how far an average retail customer can proceed through the banking process without a password.

For example, JPMorgan Chase customers can gain access to their bank accounts with their fingerprints, but have to use a traditional password to transfer money.

Still, the speed and accuracy of the banks’ biometric capabilities are especially notable because they are emerging from an industry known for its antiquated system of tellers and branches and endless reams of paperwork.

Wells Fargo’s eye scan technology, for example, worked so quickly that the developers had to slow it down by a few seconds so customers knew it had actually registered their identities.

It takes only about 40 seconds to capture enough information about a customer’s vocal patterns to create a voice imprint that can be used as a form of identification, according to Andrew S. Keen, director of program management for Global Consumer Operations at Citigroup. Once a print is established, it can reduce the time that customers spend identifying themselves to a call center representative.

Many financial firms emphasize the convenience of biometrics, but USAA is one of the few that highlights the effectiveness of these technologies at thwarting thieves.

Since USAA began offering biometric authentication early last year, more than 1.7 million customers have been accessing their accounts using either their fingerprints, voices or facial scans.

“We can’t rely on personal identification information any longer,” said Mr. Shaw. “We believe we have to rely on biometrics.”

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We left upper-class suburbia to become Amish and learned what community really means

By Jeff Smith and Bill Moser, Washington Post, June 21, 2016

Twenty years ago, when Bill and Tricia Moser were in their late 30s, they stepped away from their upper-middle class lives in Grosse Point, Mich., and joined the horse-and-buggy Amish. No more BMWs. No more architectural career for him. No more occupational therapy career for her. No more happy hours with the creative class. No more hair salon. Motivated by a desire to live out their faith in a more moment-by-moment way, the Mosers chose homemade clothes, built pallets for money, tried to learn horsemanship and focused time on their children, their faith and their community. In this essay, the Mosers share some of the lessons they learned from the Amish:

1. The Amish defy political and cultural categories. Living among them helped us shape our life in a way guided by faith, not by general societal expectations. For us, a fascinating part of the Amish journey was seeing how the people of this faith are both extremely conservative and extremely liberal all at the same time.

On the conservative side: They hold onto a give-no-ground stance on abortion and divorce. They advocate extremely modest dress. They reject offensive lyrics in popular music. They reject government involvement in citizens’ lives to the point of refusing government services like Social Security payments or unemployment benefits–benefits most of them pay into and are entitled to. They are entrepreneurial, with many having their own businesses. They advocate fiscal austerity.

On the liberal side, the Amish refuse to fight in wars. They gather to build houses for one another, donating their labor. They support one another in business in a socialist-like way (more on that in a second). They agree as a community that nobody should be getting rich while others in the community are poor. And while Amish communities emphasize the conservative principals of fiscal austerity, they do so with what most Americans would view as a completely unacceptable socialistic intrusion into family life: In our community, a panel of church members reviews any family’s purchase decision of more than $10,000. While somehow this way of life defies general society expectations, boundaries and rules, it all makes sense, all achieves unity, all achieves singularity under the teachings of Jesus, to honor God and care for our brothers and sisters.

2. Community is essential. When we left general society, we were seeking a community of faith where we could immerse in a shared sense of the Bible, a shared set of values, and shared life goals. We wanted to live where our interaction with faith was not just a Sunday-morning service and a Wednesday-evening Bible study, but instead a moment-by-moment part of our lives. Living among the Amish gave us that. When we gather with community members in a field to cut hay for horse feed, in a kitchen to can applesauce for the year, at a home site to build a barn, or even as we watch buggies pass our home on their way to school, each moment of that life, that work, that togetherness is an expression of our faith. We do not feel the separation of church and life that we felt when we were part of general society, even though we attended fine churches.

We found that being part of a strong, tight community fulfilled a deep human need, a need that God created in us. Jesus speaks of our need to be part of a community, but our secular philosophers do so as well. As Wendell Berry said, “We have thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one’s partiality.” We lived the truth of that statement.

3. Capitalism can and should be done in a more humane way. It should focus foremost on supporting families and community versus enriching individuals.

Though the Amish would reject the term “entrepreneurial” as a prideful notion to avoid, the Amish launch many businesses and have a very high start-up survival rate. Sociologist Donald Kraybill, who has studied the Amish extensively, found 95 percent of new Amish businesses were still going after five years–far higher than in general society. But we found that the Amish achieve that remarkable capitalistic success in part by using principles that could be viewed as socialistic.

For one, the Amish help one another–even competitors–to a surprising degree. A tomato farmer might teach another farmer to grow tomatoes, and then they’d sell opposite one another in the same farm market. When we first became Amish, we bought a pallet business from an Amish man, and at the closing of the deal, the seller, whom I did not know prior to the business deal, realized that I did not have enough money to purchase the initial lumber I would need. He simply said, “I will just leave $10,000 in the checking account that you can use and you can pay me back when you are able.” In the view of American commerce, that was a ridiculously risky unsecured loan with nothing signed, no paperwork of any kind. In the language of our Amish community, that was brotherhood.

In many cases, when companies do have employees, there are built-in ways for workers to earn an ownership stake–sweat equity–so they can share in the profits. The community has a realistic understanding that a family needs a certain amount of money to lead a healthy life. Obviously there are exceptions to all of this, but in the Amish communities where we have lived, that generally means the owner of the company makes less than would be the case in general society, and the workers make more. The Amish see this as another expression of Jesus’ teachings of community of faith.

4. Education can happen outside a schoolroom. My wife and I both went to college. Our broader family is highly educated. My wife’s brother is a chief financial officer at a university. My brother’s wife is a genetics researcher with a doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Nearly all of our siblings and their children have college degrees. So when my wife and I announced we were joining a culture that ended formal schooling upon completion of eighth grade, it caused much tension within our family. Education was the single most controversial aspect of our becoming Amish. And while it’s true that our children have only an eighth-grade education formally, as adults they are constant readers and constant learners, and when viewed by a broader measure of “Are our children successful in life?” the answer is yes.

When arguing the 1972 Supreme Court case that allowed the Amish to leave school after eighth grade, the lawyer William Ball built his argument with testimony from a county welfare agent, a sheriff and a school administrator, asking questions like, “Are any Amish on welfare?” No. “Are any Amish breaking the law?” No. “Are any Amish a problem in school?” No. The point the attorney was making is that we need to assess the success of Amish education from a more holistic vantage point.

Our eldest son is part owner of a metal fabrication company. Our second-oldest son is running a truss-building company. Our third son works at an orphanage in Ecuador. Our fourth son is learning to run a lumberyard. Our daughter is a teacher. Our youngest son is just now 18, and his career will take shape later. My wife and I feel God did not make us to sit in classroom chairs for 13 years and learn mostly from books. Life is more complex than that.

Final note about education. When my brother-in-law, the chief financial officer, was visiting recently, he asked to see the books of the truss-building business that our son runs, and I could just see him working to get his mind around the fact that my son, who never had formal schooling, was running a company of this scale with such a skill for organization and accounting. We are not saying everybody should stop schooling in eighth grade. That approach is part of the Amish faith, and they have a system of support built around that. But we do feel American education can learn from the Amish’s more whole-brain way of learning.

5. There were aspects of Amish life that weren’t for us. Ultimately, we left the horse-and-buggy Amish and transitioned to an Amish-Mennonite church, which is based on the same statement of faith as our Amish church but differs in some ways culturally. We drive cars now and are not so separate from general society. A main reason we made that transition was the language barrier. The Amish culture speaks Pennsylvania German, a language my wife and I were never able to learn–we felt like expats in Amish nation. And despite a willingness on the part of our churches to provide translation during church and community members’ willingness to speak English to us when visiting, the language difference felt like a screen between us and the depth of spiritual experience we sought.

Also, the horse-and-buggy Amish are strongly devoted to being separate from society, but we felt a desire to share our message of faith with a broader world, and the Amish-Mennonite church we joined is more open to that sharing. This essay is part of our desire to share.

6. It’s not easy becoming a horseman in middle age. You can ask our children for the details.

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Closest Thing to a Wonder Drug? Try Exercise

Aaron E. Carroll, NY Times, June 20, 2016

After I wrote last year that diet, not exercise, was the key to weight loss, I was troubled by how some readers took this to mean that exercise therefore had no value.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Of all the things we as physicians can recommend for health, few provide as much benefit as physical activity.

In 2015, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges put out a report calling exercise a “miracle cure.” This isn’t a conclusion based simply on some cohort or case-control studies. There are many, many randomized controlled trials. A huge meta-analysis examined the effect of exercise therapy on outcomes in people with chronic diseases.

Let’s start with musculoskeletal diseases. Researchers found 32 trials looking specifically at the effect of exercise on pain and function of patients with osteoarthritis of the knee alone. That’s incredibly specific, and it’s impressive that so much research has focused on one topic.

Exercise improved those outcomes. Ten more studies showed, over all, that exercise therapy increases aerobic capacity and muscle strength in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Other studies proved its benefits in other musculoskeletal conditions, like ankylosing spondylitis, and even some types of back pain.

For people (mostly middle-aged men) who had had a heart attack, exercise therapy reduced all causes of mortality by 27 percent and cardiac mortality by 31 percent. Fourteen additional controlled trials showed physiological benefits in those with heart failure. Exercise has also been shown to lower blood pressure in patients with hypertension, and improve cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

People with diabetes who exercise have lower HbA1c values, which is the marker of blood sugar control, low enough to probably reduce the risk of complications from the disease. Twenty randomized controlled trials have showed that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease can walk farther and function better if they exercise.

Multiple studies have found that exercise improves physical function and health-related quality of life in people who have Parkinson’s disease. Six more studies showed that exercise improves muscle power and mobility-related activities in people with multiple sclerosis. It also appeared to improve those patients’ moods.

The overall results of 23 randomized controlled trials showed that exercise most likely improves the symptoms of depression. Five others appear to show that it improves symptoms in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. In trials, exercise even lessened fatigue in patients who were having therapy for cancer.

What other intervention can claim results like these?

Even studies of older, hospitalized patients show a beneficial effect from multidisciplinary interventions that include exercise. Those randomized to such interventions in the hospital were more likely to be discharged to go home, and to spend less time in the hospital over all–and at a lower cost.

Although we don’t think of it this way, you can make a pretty good argument that exercise is as good as drugs for many conditions. A 2013 meta-analysis of meta-analyses (that’s how much data we have) combined and analyzed the results from 16 reviews of randomized controlled trials of drug and exercise interventions in reducing mortality. Collectively, these included 305 trials with almost 340,000 participants.

Diuretic drugs (but not all drugs) were shown to be superior to exercise in preventing death from heart failure. But exercise was found to be equally good as drugs in preventing mortality from coronary heart disease. Exercise was better than drugs in preventing death among patients from strokes.

Many people will be surprised at how little you need to do to achieve these results. Years ago, in an effort to get in shape, I tried the P90X routine. It proved too hard for me. Later, when I tried the Insanity workout, it beat me so badly that people at work kept asking me if I was ill. Two years ago, I tried P90X3. It was a bit more manageable, but I still couldn’t keep it up.

I have not been alone in thinking that physical activity to improve health should be hard. When I hear friends talk about exercising, they discuss running marathons, participating in cross-fit classes or sacrificing themselves on the altar of SoulCycle. That misses the point, unfortunately. All of these are much more than you need to do to get the benefits I’ve described.

The recommendations for exercise are 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity physical activity for adults, or about 30 minutes each weekday.

Moderate intensity is probably much less than you think. Walking briskly, at 3 to 4 miles per hour or so, qualifies. So does bicycling slower than 10 miles an hour. Anything that gets your heart rate somewhere between 110 and 140 beats per minute is enough. Even vacuuming, mowing the lawn or walking your dog might qualify.

Today, my goals are much more modest. Trekking from my office to the clinic and back again gives me 30 minutes of exercise. Or, I walk to the supermarket from my office to grab lunch, at a mile each way. In colder weather, I spend half an hour on the elliptical machine. Doing this five days a week gets me the activity I need.

Although it feels as if there’s nothing we can do to change people’s behavior, there is evidence to the contrary. A systematic review and meta-analysis of advice and counseling by health professionals found that promotion of physical activity works.

Doctors and clinics that made efforts to promote exercise to patients needed to engage 12 adults on the subject to get one additional adult to meet recommended levels of activity one year later. That might not sound impressive, but it’s one of the better such results.

After the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges wrote its report, an editorial in the BMJ, a prominent medical journal, countered that exercise wasn’t a “miracle cure.” Instead, the authors argued it was “the best buy for public health.”

If that’s the best “counterpoint,” then physical activity seems like a no-brainer.

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