Balance is the Scriptural Caution

Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Philippians 4:5

Moderation: gentleness, modesty, consideration, reasonableness, graciousness, humility, fairness, forbearance, restraint on the passions, free of all excesses, general soberness of living.

As the expositor Barnes has noted, “People indulge their passions – are extravagant in their plans of life, and in their expectations of earthly good for themselves and for their families, because they have no realizing sense of the truth that there is before them a vast eternity. He that has a lively expectation that heaven will soon be his, will form very moderate expectations of what this world can furnish.”

Dr. Seuss’ Thing One and Thing Two (see The Cat in the Hat, another important life book) in the balance world are Never Do and Never Done.

Never Do and Never Done each careen around our lives flipping over priorities and staining responsibilities with their blots of neglect and excess. Both are self-indulgent. Both are self-serving. Both glibly avoid thinking about what constitutes reasonable attention or time investment to fulfill the priorities and responsibilities in a life lived under God’s all-seeing eye and the imminent expectation of His return. And in true fictional delight, we think they are cute and their destruction amusing because everything gets set right at the end!

In real life (where a mechanical maid as efficient as the magical clean-up machine do not exist), Never Do and Never Done need to face Proper Priorities. Proper priorities include planning for and taking adequate time to maintain and care for what the Lord has provided as well as who He has given. Proper priorities account for both sides of the essential vitality of living: glorifying the Lord through effective ministry relationships with  people and effective stewardship of things He has given to use for others.

Helps are available to grow our skills in balance and moderation.

• Time limits for tasks help keep us moderate.
• Designing routines that can become automated and cover many different tasks in one effective package help keep us moderate (hmm…. that sounds a little like a clean-up machine).
• Identifying the life priorities we would rather avoid or minimize, and giving them particular time and specific projects, rather than leftover time or happenstance attention, helps keep us moderate.
• Alternating between the big, eternal view of life and the need to attend to daily details of life, (without bemoaning either, by the way) helps to keep us moderate.

And there are benefits to being balanced.

• Balanced people can be gentle because they realize how much additional investment in the life process they still require.
• Balanced people realize how difficult being thorough and consistent is because they have actually worked at being thorough and consistent in their habits.
• Balanced people know how much grand thinking and overflowing breadth of process and priority knowledge is required to attend to details effectively.

Balance is first and foremost, a way of thinking.

• Thinking greatly aided by the concentration cycles and experimental mindset tools.
• Thinking benefited from equal doses of creative brainstorming and eager willingness to puzzle through technical details.
• Thinking which grows from a bed of inner humility that is neither puffed by grand exploits nor demeaned by meager tasks, but  handles each in turn, as fitting service to the Lord.