GORGEOUS BALANCE

Flipping the issues of sin and trouble for a moment, we have to appreciate the incredible ironies known to life. We smile obsequiously.

Take the marital relationship. It has its continual ups and downs, as do all relationships mind you.

Moods too. One day changes into another and a whole fresh mood (never quite the same as yesterday) is known.

A delicious balance is known to life—a balance that none can master, or if they do, they don’t master it for long.

In this way life’s fair. It gives not one an advantage over another, give or take the notional trust fund, silver spoon or God-indwelled talent—or for that matter, Cystic Fibrosis, paraplegia or bankruptcy—of which seem indiscriminate anyway.

The Other Side’s No Greener

One of the golden keys to life is the propensity to resist making comparisons. Comparison is the work of envy. Envying someone for the things they have de-values the very things we have, forgetting that possession is nine-tenths of not only the law, but of happiness also.

Whenever we think we have the poorer portion—forgetting the vast thousands and millions worse off—we cut ourselves off instantly from that balance which is ours; that which God has gifted us all with.

Allowing the Balance to ‘Trickle’ Over Us

Attaining balance is not so much the goal of life—though we cannot help trying to do it. It’s much more a case of appreciating the balances required of life.

Can we imagine for a moment life falling over for lack of balance?

When we’re ‘gentle with ourselves’ (a la The Desiderata) we quickly find that life is not that threatening. We park our fears as we come to see balance for what it is—something that’s a constant in life, whether we fear it or not.

Stretch Back the Mind – Free the Heart

It’s taking the time to sit back into that park bench and muse about the way life works and our role(s) in it. The broader view or the bigger picture is salubrious. It sweeps us away from the detail and re-tracks us in the eternal. It brings us back to the understanding that all things are in tension and that speaks of this gorgeous balance we could only simply marvel at.

But this picture doesn’t stop us from contributing to balance—interceding in love for life, people, our world.

Okay, it’s easy to get ‘fixed’ in the troubles of the world and these too are true, but there is the ‘just as true’ reality that God has this balance operant in life and that, for him, all things work for the good.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.