If you were a florist, and your
job was to deliver flowers to people, you would make sure not only that the
flowers are in good condition but that the driver is neat, clean, polite, and
friendly and that the van is clean and well maintained. Being spiritual does
not mean neglecting the physical. If your job is to carry a beneficial message
about God's love and the transformation available to others through the
programme of AA, let alone be of use in other areas, you have to make sure your
body is working well. Physical health, exercise, stopping smoking, diet, and
reversing or avoiding obesity and other factors that provoke disease and
shorten life are therefore important. Our job in AA is to maximise our
effectiveness as servants of God, and to do so we need to be in fit condition
and maximise the length of time available to do the work at hand. People might
cry out that this is none of anyone's business but their own. That's fair
enough if one hasn't taken Step Three. But once one has taken Step Three, one
has decided to consider how one can best serve God, and physical health is
clearly vital to support this.