Healthy Bodies
by Susanna Martinez
Boys and girls, it’s my opportunity once again to bring you the story this Sabbath.
Now, last time you saw me was when we were beginning a new year, right? A new, it was 2025 that we started. Can you believe a month has already gone by? Today is February 1st. Let me think, have you kept your resolutions? What you promised you would try to do this year? I know a lot of adults already gave up.
So today I want to encourage you to make those changes. And it made me think to start in the beginning. I opened my Bibles. Do you know what Genesis 1.1 says? It says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And you know what? God did everything in order. He made sure the earth was ready for humans, for us, even for the animals too. There are certain things that God made sure were in place so that we could live here.
And do you know that the Bible always gives us gives us advice on what we can do to live better lives? One of the first things is make sure we get plenty of air, pure air. Now I know it’s a little hard when we live in the city, but one of the problems that we have is that we don’t know how to breathe right. We just breathe very shallow. We should be taking deep breaths, filling up our tummies, then releasing it as we inhale and exhale. Do you have a baby around? You should observe them, how their little tummies get big, and then they get small. They’re taking deep breaths. We need to remember how to do that.
I showed you some time ago on how to relax, taking deep breath. Inhale, exhale. Not only does it help our bodies, but it helps us calm down too.
Another thing we should do is rest. I have my computer here and it tells me that toddlers one to two years of age, they should be sleeping 11 to 14 hours a day. Preschool children three to five years, 10 to 13 hours a day. They should be including naps, right? School-aged children, 6 to 12 years, 9 to 12 hours. And teenagers, they should be sleeping 8 to 10 hours. Sleep should be very important, even for big people. We need to make sure we go to sleep, before 10 o’clock is ideal.
Exercise. We talked about exercise. It’s good to get our heart pumping and move our blood, to have our blood moving our bodies. That would help us get rid of toxins, bad stuff in our body when we exercise. We need to make sure we’re outside and we get plenty of sunlight. That gives us vitamin D and a lot of beautiful things happen in our bodies. Because who created the sun? That’s right. God did.
Now, another thing that we need to make sure that we’re doing is making sure we drink a lot of water, not juice, not Gatorade. Oh, and not soda. Water. Because God created water for us. We should be drinking plenty of water. We need to make sure what we eat too. What fuel do we put in our bodies? Mommy has a car, right? And she needs to go to the gas station and put gas. Have you ever seen Mommy put orange juice in there? No, right? Or coffee? No, we need to learn to put the right things in our body. Make sure we’re giving our body the right fuel.
Okay, make sure we’re eating nutritious food, not a lot of junk food. Now, we need to have moderation in our body. Not a lot of anything, but a little bit of a lot of things. That will help our body. And you know the most important thing? Is having hope, hope in Jesus Christ. Hope that there’s someone bigger and better out there who worries about us. No matter what happens, we’ll have bad days. God is always with us.
Now, I invite you to start again and make better choices for this year. Okay, let’s bow our heads.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, dear Lord, for another opportunity you’ve given us to begin. Help us, dear Lord, to start like you. to be able to take care of our bodies so that we can better serve you. Help us make better choices for our bodies so that they can be strong and healthy. For we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Bye, boys and girls.