Athlete, you have entered fall; in other words, routine.

Your class schedule is set. Your sports schedule is posted. Your semester is a predetermined course with little room for variances. Every Monday looks about the same, every Tuesday too. Even though a semester is relatively short, it grows routine quickly.

If you are like me, you wonder where you are going to find newness in an old routine. You wonder when something refreshing will sprout in the middle of monotony.

You might think, “I just laced up these shoes. I just opened this book. I was just in the cafeteria five hours ago.”

Get used to it. The vast majority of our lives is spent doing small tasks within a larger routine. Part of being human is to have routine and inherent limitations within that routine.

Athlete, in our routines and humanness we want to feel newness. We want to feel dynamic and meaningful. We want rejuvenating thoughts as we walk to class, talk to people and do laundry.

Understandably so, we try various things to transcend our routines and limitations. A lot of those things are unproductive and harmful. But God gives us access to refreshment smack in the middle of mundane. It is not that we need to escape reality, it is that we need to enter it deeper.

My sister and I used to go a waterpark called Island Oasis in Grand Island, Nebraska. They had a lazy river and steep slides. It was refreshing to go there on a hot, dry summer day.

Athlete, our lives can seem like monotonous, dry summer days.

But God wants to refresh us like Island Oasis refreshed me.

If God did not want to refresh us, He would not renew our minds. If God did not want us to experience newness, He would not make us new. If God did not want us to be lively, He would not have put His energetic and dynamic Spirit in us.

Athlete, our God is a God of routine and refreshment. God likes routine. Look – the sun makes roughly the same arc in the sky everyday of our lives. God likes refreshment too. Look – the morning brings a new day after you wake up from sleep.

Look around your room. Look around the weight room, classroom and cafeteria. They might look as they always do, but there is a new thought in your mind that is as alive and refreshing as the God who gave it.