Balancing Act

Mark 12:30 – And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. (NASB)

Not long ago, I started running in the mornings with one of my neighbours. To my surprise, this has proven to be as much a spiritual exercise as a physical exercise, as each morning during our run we share with each other things we may be going through or problems we may be having.

For the past several days I have really been struggling in my life. I am not really going through a lot of problems or trials, but I have just been struggling. I realized that at the root of my struggles was the fact that I was extremely drained mentally. Physically I have been doing well, able to exercise every morning, but I have still felt "tired" because of the mental drain. In going through this I stumbled upon a wonderful lesson for myself, and hopefully for others as well.

The other morning I was sharing with my running companion the fact that I felt mentally drained. He asked me if I was sure it was mental and not spiritual. That is when it hit me. My reply caught me somewhat off-guard, as if it were someone else speaking through my mouth. My reply was this: "Well, to tell you the truth, it did not start out as a spiritual drain, but it has indeed overflowed into that. I have come to realize that our lives are a constant balancing act between our spirit, mind, and body. The trick is not to allow one to pull the others down, but rather to use the ones that are going well to pull the struggling one(s) up."

I myself had not been following those words, but instead had allowed my struggling mind to pull down both my body and spirit down into a quagmire. So starting that day, I began trying to focus on getting my mind back up to par and pulling from the energy of my body and spirit to do so. It is evident that Jesus realized that our lives were subject to this balancing routine, as He tells us in the scripture that we are to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, spirit, and strength. That is the true key to the balancing act: the focus of each aspect of our being should be upon God. If we lose sight or focus upon God with even one, then the balance is no longer maintained and eventually we may find that we have completely lost sight of God.

So the challenge is to get our lives into balance. If we focus all of our being upon God, He will take care of the rest.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, we thank You for Your word which tells us to give our all unto You. Give us the faith, strength, and determination to focus our spirits, bodies, and minds upon You so that we might maintain that delicate balance in our lives. Amen.

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