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Keeping your Balance

Kids like to test their balance. Whether it is walking on a fence, a sidewalk curb or a “Balance beam” in a gym, there is something about the challenge of seeing how far we can go without falling off.

“Balance” is a key idea when we are grown too. He are some ideas about how to “keep your balance” in the New Year.

First, we need to look back. Past successes and failures have a lot to teach us if we would just take the time to remember and think about them. God’s people, Israel, were very concerned about where they had come from and what they had learned.

For example, when God stopped the water so that his people could cross the Jordan River, they were commanded to take twelve stones from the river and pile them up on the other shore. The Bible then says, “In the future, when your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord” (Joshua 4:6-7). God did not want them to forget how he had taken care of them in the past.

We also need to keep our eyes focused on the future. It is important to know where you are going and the Bible says that we are headed for eternity. This world is not our home. This life is not all that there is. “Listen, I will tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). Jesus said that he has gone to prepare a place for us and that he is coming back to get us (John 14:1-4). If this life is not the end, then I need to be preparing for my future home.

Thirdly, of course, you need to live today. Many people lose the joy of today because they are lost in past mistakes or worries about future possibilities. In the words of Jesus, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). God knows us and is looking after us (verse 32). Can you see the blessings that you have right now? Can you be thankful for, and live in, the good things of today?

Remembering the past and the thinking about the future will help us live a better, more balanced, more “God honouring” life today.

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