Proverbs 11.1, A FALSE balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight. Proverbs 16.11, A just weight and balance are the LORD’S: all the weights of the bag are his work. Proverbs 20.23: Divers weights are an abomination unto the LORD; and a false balance is not good. Balance. Such a simply word yet a difficult concept. We have been programmed to strive for balance. The fun/work balance, give/take balance, eat your veggies/have your cake balance, friends/family balance. We want to make sure each dangling tray carries the right amount of weight to keep the scale from tipping. Every added element complicates the process. Family, dorm life and college life, classes, homework, sleep, friends, fun, ministry, church, work, hygiene, devotions and prayer life all add into the balance. Personally I have responsibilities as a student, a church member, a Christian, as a daughter, a sister and an aunt. I have responsibilities and expectations to my home church, my family, my friends, my employer, and my boyfriend. Each aspect of life will fight for top priority and attention. Without proper balance life is miserable. The difficulty is getting all of the elements of life to coincide in unity and work together instead of against each other.
Balance: an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady; a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions. Balance is having everything in its proper place. “Balance is paying attention to the things that matter most at the time that they matter most” - Kolette Hall “When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love for the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities.” – Ezra Taft Benson He should be first, front, and center of our lives. Having right priorities is key to good balance. Without Christ in His proper place, every other matter will be out of order. Life is confusing when the central aspect of life is missing. When God becomes the center of our lives as our greatest priority, He then becomes the only priority. He becomes all of our life because we have no other. “What? Know yet not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which yet have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Corinthians 6.19-20) “That I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2.20) There should be no higher priority than Him. Anything that you place in the position where He should be becomes a god in your life. It is like the mind teaser puzzle my uncle had at his house when I was little. There were all these triangular shaped pieces that became a ball once all the pieces were in their proper place. The key to the puzzle was the center piece. If that one piece was wrong and you had a different piece in the center, all the rest of the pieces become impossible to fit together. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20.30) “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3.2-3) Balance is having everything in its proper quantity. While washing silverware at work, all the pieces get placed in plastic cups that sit on flat trays. The weight of the trays can make them quite difficult to lift. Yet none more than when all the cups shift to a single end of the tray. It is much easier to carry a tray of heavy, dripping silverware when it is evenly distributed across the entire surface of the tray rather than all in one corner or another. Placing all of the weight in one area or another is a definite imbalance. Balance is not always equal weight, at times it is just having the weight in the right areas. A see-saw is a good example of this. I loved them as a child. Before the park removed them (more than likely because of kids like myself), I remember going to play on them with my older brother. He got on one end, and then the rest of us kids piled on the other end. After some trial and error, we eventually would figure out how many of us were needed on the one end, or he would move closer to the center of the see-saw to even it out. Physics lessons for children. Sometimes we place too much weight in one area; we put too much weight on one side of the see-saw. Work is good, friends are good, homework is good, but take any one of those areas and put too much weight on it and your life will be unbalanced. Focusing too much on even a good area will cause the rest of your life to become out of place. Sometimes we need to push that thing closer to the center of the see-saw and even out the weight. Priorities are key. Balance is having everything in its proper perspective. Balance is not always equal - This is one of the big things I have learned lately. Consider a scale. To cause the weight to balance does not always mean having one thing on one side and another single equal thing on the opposite side. Sometimes it means having many smaller things on one side and one larger, weightier thing on the other end. Art is the same way. Balance doesn't necessarily mean symmetry. Asymmetrical balance occurs when elements are placed unevenly in a piece, but work together to produce harmony overall. Basically balance in art refers to the “sense of distribution of perceived visual weights that offset one another.” For example, a larger object is heavier than a smaller object. Darker, textured, or a more complex object is heavier than a lighter, smooth, or simple object. Architecture has the same effect. Essentially, balance doesn’t mean breaking your life up into equal parts and giving a piece to everything that demands your attention but rather making sure that the most important things stay the most important things. At times in your life, spending three hours on one activity followed up with 10 minutes with another is balance. Balance at times is spending one big chunk of time on something while with another you spend a bunch of smaller portions throughout the week. In that situation it may in fact be the proper balance you need. Balance is having everything in its proper control. Achieving balance is impossible if it is not done under the guidance of the Lord. Proverbs 16.11, “A just weight and balance are the LORD’S: all the weights of the bag are his work.” (Emphasis mine) We cannot find a balance within our own lives without His help. It is when I try to do it on my own that it all falls apart. He must be center and from there HE balances everything out, not me. I laugh as I look back over last semester as I struggled to find balance midst college life. Everything I tried to do or thought would help in finding a sense of balance completely failed. The end result was something completely opposite from what I initially attempted to do. Balance is having everything in its proper place Balance is having everything in its proper quantity. Balance is having everything in its proper perspective. Balance is having everything in its proper control. All in all, balance is from Him. He is the center and from there, everything falls into place.
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January 2023
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