Five Reasons to Go Outside

Don’t play in the street you might get run over by a car. Don’t go to the woods alone you might get eaten by a bear. Don’t eat dirt it might be full of worms and you might carry eggs around in your belly and you might die and they might come out of your nose. Okay that last one was a little extreme, but the point is why don’t you let your kid outside? Why don’t you go outside, too?

Here are five reasons to go outside this weekend…

1. It is good for you to be in nature. There is something refreshing about taking a walk outside or taking a hike in the woods. Take a deep breath of about 20% oxygen and get a move on.
2. Outside is a lot bigger than inside. I currently have two full grown human adults and six human children living in my house. The outside square footage of the world is bigger than the inside square footage of my house. The same is probably true for you. Take advantage of it.
3. Playing in the dirt is good for your mental health – https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/66840.php
4. There are lots of things outside – trees, leaves, lichen, hidden paths, unexplored caves, bridges to nowhere, creeks, streams, swampy forests, butterflies, moths, snakes, rabbits, sunshine, bushes, rocks, hills, and ants. All of which you could spend an afternoon exploring.
5. You were made for the earth. You were made from the earth. “When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, [6] and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—[7] then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” Genesis 2:5-7). The name Adam (the name for the first man, and also the word for humans) can literally be translated as “earthling.” Go outside and be an “earthling.

Have a great weekend outside. Get out there. Run. Jump. Read. Run some more. . Read some more. Hike. Tell stories around a campfire. Climb a tree. Play in the dirt. Take a nap on the ground. Smell some flowers. Taste them if you dare. Get bruises. Get busy living. Something greater awaits you.

Let us know what you are doing outside this weekend.