Balance

“When will I ever find balance in my life again?” That’s what I found myself saying the other day to a friend. I said it tongue in cheek in reference to the fact that I haven’t done yoga in over a month, but after it came out I realized it was a legitimate concern. I’m rolling into about the thirtieth day in a row to work and I’m trying to rest well…knowing that its not going to end for a while. I’m starting to understand more why God created the earth with a 6:1, work:rest cycle. There is a rhythm to life that we need to embrace. Our bodies are limited…we can’t physically go for more than a few days without sleep or food. We can only run so far, jump so high, lift so much weight, cry so many tears….before it just stops.
But it’s the immortal things that God put in us that intrigue me more…the seemingly limitless things that awe me. I have a pretty clear understanding of my boundaries, but it’s the spiritual well that never runs dry, the ever-expanding room in our brains for knowledge, the way our bodies grow and change to accept new circumstances that are the real mystery. Like the man I heard about recently who never really worked out in his life and decided at fifty to run marathons with his handicapped son. He started at a mile and worked his way up and now consistently runs these things pushing and carrying his son. Yes, he was limited…and still is…but the spirit in him pushed that physical boundary consistently enough that the physical gave and shifted and conformed. But it’s the spirit that was stronger.
And I guess our brains are the size of our fists and weigh however much that kid in Jerry McGuire said, but they retain years of memories…smells, tastes, lyrics to songs that you didn’t know were in there until you hear it ten years later at a wedding or on the radio. But each day you add a million new things to that database that the smallest trigger could cause you to recall…and its grey and mushy. What?!
And the craziest part to me is what Jesus said to the woman at the well about his living water that never runs dry. He said “The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” So in us, beyond the flesh, beyond the muscles and tendons, in the deep dark middle of our very humanness, is a source…what I believe to be life itself. Sometimes I think I choke it up with the crud I allow to live there, or I bend it like a hose when I allow everything to tense up with worries. But we have this ability to let it flow over all those things. We don’t have to get dried up and crusty…and we don’t have to portion it out as if it were limited. Oh, that I could give full vent to that living water.
So, while I know that the 6:1, work:rest cycle is by design and in rhythm with creation, I do think that he’s given us an inner balance. An unending source of refreshment that we can choose to tap into. A way to live in constant balance…to find rest in work…to give while taking…a laughter in the raw realities of life. Ahh…divine humanness…the canvas you give us…thank you Lord.