If you're a Star
Wars fan, like myself, then you would be familiar with the recurring theme of
“bringing balance to the force”. It’s kinda the same with us. There seems to be
an unending search or desire for BALANCE in our lives. As we grow older, we are
offered opportunities and responsibilities one after the other. If you are
“praning” about balancing your life now, wait till you get married and have
kids!
How do we achieve balance?
We don’t.
Wait, what did I just say?
WE DON'T!
The problem with our inability to
bring balance to our life lies in our definition of balance. It almost always
comes from the idea of equality, equal weight on both poles, one not
outweighing the other. Perhaps an image of this balance would be a tightrope
walker who has to make sure that he is perfectly balanced lest he falls to
catastrophic results.
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| Image from http://people.com/movies/philippe-petit-world- trade-center-wire-walker-remembers-twin-towers-after-911) |
I was just watching the movie “The Walk” the other day,
and oh man, Philippe Petit surely got balance going for him! But even he, the expert, wasn’t
in “balance” all the time! And I wasn't able to stay balanced on the couch coz I felt nauseous half of the time while watching this movie...on TV! hahaha
Jill Briscoe has this to say about
balance, particularly about balancing ministry and marriage:
“The question we are asked all the time is how we
balance marriage and ministry. Balance means equilibrium; which means two
competing forces in equality. My point is, as soon as we talk about balancing
marriage and ministry, there is an unspoken assumption that they are competing
forces and this is fundamentally wrong. They are not. Both are ordained by God.
Both are predicated on love. Both are manifested in goodness. So why are they
competing? In actual fact, your marriage and your family can become a platform
for your ministry. Ministry to each member becomes the ethos of the family.” (Lecture at Trinity Wives
Fellowship Large Group, Deerfield IL, 2008)
In other words, if I may say so, to achieve balance in life is to achive the impossible. There is no such thing as perfect
balance when we talk about life. Perfect balance can only be achieved with (1) inanimate
objects, and (2) by an external
force. Inanimate objects such as a scale, a beam, a see-saw…yeah, things with no life
of its own. Thus it entails an external force, the balancer, to apply this
balance to it.
There
is no way for dynamic, animate objects a.k.a. people, to achieve balance. Interestingly,
a tightrope walker doesn’t actually achieve that perfect balance at any point
on the rope. He is constantly making adjustments with every step that he
makes. (Now you notice, huh!)
That is the keyword – ADJUSTMENT. “He constantly shifts his weight to
respond to all the outside forces that threaten his balance” (Terri Chappel, It’s
a Wonderful Life, 2006. P189)
In
life, it is not about achieving balance, but making adjustments.
You cannot find the Bible
addressing the topic on having a balanced life, but it does address about a
season for everything under the sun (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) and adjusting to each
one of them as they come.
When you do not make the necessary
adjustments to your life, the ‘urgent’ will crowd out the more important. We
hear only the loud noises of urgency and immediate crisis that end up deafening
our ears to the quiet and highly important cries of our God, our families, our
hearts.
We need to continually make
adjustments. Don’t stop. When you stop, you fall.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “He
that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”
You want balance? Forget it.
Instead, ADJUST!
