“The Balancing Act”

In the last couple of years, we (and our congregations) have been impacted by Bishop Robert Schnase’s book Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations (see posts we’ve written on Five Practices).

Bishop Schnase, who blogs, also wrote a small book that can be used as a 30-day devotional called The Balancing Act: A Daily Rediscovery of Grace. We’ve had the book, published in 2009, for nearly that long (the last two+ years have been a bit of a blur), and while I had read a few sections in it, I remembered this morning that I need to finish it—and I’m glad I did!

I’ll post a few quotes from the book in the days ahead, but for now, I love the idea behind the title. Bishop Schnase says that while most of us would love to live a “balanced life,” it’s not really possible. Using the example of a tightrope walker, Bishop Schanse writes, “the tightrope walker with her excellent sense of balance is never completely balanced; she is always balancing” (14).

According to Bishop Schnase, “the best we can do is commit ourselves to the hard work of balancing, of constantly noticing and adjusting to keep from leaning too far one way or the other and falling into disaster” (14).

In my own life, I think I do this in a couple ways:

  1. When I feel out of balance, I think about “finding (my) way back” (see Life Realignment which includes links to previous posts in series).
  2. Even when things are moving along okay but may be slowing down (on the back end of a wave), I may try to shake things up so that I can gain some new energy for the journey ahead (see my post, There’s Always a Better Way!, for more on this).

One final quote from the opening chapter:

We never find the ideal pattern that needs no reconsideration, recalibration, or rebalancing. Life is constant movement, forward stepping, sidetracking, detouring, self-correcting, getting a little lost, and finding our way back with the help of friends. (15)

Where do you need to do some rebalancing?

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