BALANCE

This morning, into the afternoon, I had the privilege of sitting down for lunch with my pastor from the church we are attending. Pastor Paul is an amazing man and an incredible mentor. We sat and talked about life, family, the church, the new church, and read different Scriptures that the Lord had led us to recently.

One that Pastor Paul shared with me was Luke 17:26-27: “And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.”

When he finished reading it, our waitress came by to refill our waters (we had phenomenal service at Bob Evans today). When she refilled the glasses, she didn’t just pour the water into our glasses on the table and make a mess. She actually picked up the glasses and put them on her serving tray and filled them while balancing them on the tray.

I noticed two things about this approach: 1) if she would have spilled, it would have been on her tray and not on our table; 2) this courtesy required her to have great balance. Pastor Paul noticed the same thing and mentioned the amount of concentration and balance she needed.

And that got me thinking…we live in such a fast-paced society; we’re always running from this to that, grabbing fast food in the car as we rush this kid to that practice and that kid to this event. And it’s not just because of the kids and all the events that they are in; adults choose to participate in so many activities as well. But that’s the key word: “choose”. We choose to be overly-active in many different events; we choose to allow our kids to run our SUVs out of gas three times a week; we choose to put other things before God, including the rest we need because of everything else going on in our lives.

Our lives are out of balance in many ways, particularly when we put other things before God. We get too busy to go to church, too busy to pray, too busy to read our Bibles. We are too busy and like those in the days of Noah, some of us may be too busy to notice that it’s too late.

We need to get back in balance and that takes deep concentration. I’m like everyone else…I get busy with everything going on in life. I get out of balance. It takes great concentration and discipline for me to stay in balance (or get back in balance).

Being balanced is so important in every area of our lives, but it is eternally essential in our Christian walks.

Concentrate on being balanced…and not too busy.

(Special thanks to Jessica for providing me with the photo. Check out her other amazing works on her website under my BLOGROLL in the column to the right.)