What BALANCE?

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. 

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!