How good is your balance?

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “God’s power in you and for you”

Our Bible verse for today: “There is an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven:” Ecclesiastes 3:1 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “How good is your balance?”

I once knew a man who lived his life like a juggler in a carnival. He could keep an amazing number of balls in the air all at the same time. For a while. Until he couldn’t. Eventually, he would drop one, and as soon as he did, he lost his rhythm and all the others would crash to the ground as well.

At other times, rather than juggle many balls (tasks and issues), he would focus heavily on one issue to the exclusion of the others. That then would result in one area of his life (such as his career, or his hobby, or physical fitness) getting an inordinate amount of his time and attention, while other areas, such as his faith life or his family, suffered neglect.

That guy was often a knucklehead about how he approached life. And, wait for it … that guy was me. It was me. I lived like that. I would try to do entirely too much for too long for too many people, and soon life would come crashing down and I would end up in the fetal position sucking my thumb for a while. Or, I would become a bit fanatical in my focus on one thing, and the rest of my life would suffer neglect.

The bad news is that I still get like that sometimes. The good news is that it doesn’t happen very often anymore. Eventually I learned the lesson Solomon so eloquently taught almost three thousand years ago in Ecclesiastes chapter three that there is an appropriate time for everything in life, and that we need to maintain a good balance.

To be healthy in all of life we need to have good balance. In other words, we need to be reasonable about how much we can do so that we don’t overload ourselves, and we need to be sure that each thing gets the right amount of attention at the right time based upon a good set of appropriate priorities. If we don’t do that, we will end up weaker not stronger. Doing too much for too long doesn’t make us a Superman or Superwoman, it makes us weak. That’s because excessive busyness is like kryptonite – it drains away our strength.

So too an excessive focus on one thing at the expense of other things – it makes us weaker overall, even if we do momentarily appear strong in that one area that’s getting too much attention.

God wants us to have proper balance in our lives based upon a good set of appropriate priorities. That’s when we will truly be strong.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

(If you like what you’re reading in these daily devotionals and if you would like more content from Oak Hill Baptist Church, join us on Sundays at 10:00 – in-person if you are nearby or, if you are geographically distant or if you just can’t make it, online at www.YouTube.com/@oakhillbaptistcrossville

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