Thursday, May 14, 2015

Continually adjusting

Maybe balance isn’t the best word. It implies finding a fixed point between two extremes. Have you ever tried to balance on top of a post? You don’t keep your balance by staying perfectly still. You stay balanced by making countless little adjustments to counter wind, muscle fatigue, and friends who are trying to push you off. Likewise, the balance between earthly and spiritual joy is anything but static. Most of the time, earthly joys capture our attention and we need to lean into spiritual things in order to keep balanced. But the minute we start to feel confident in our spiritual disciplines, self-righteousness and legalism begin to pull us the other way, so we need to embrace earthly joys more.—Radically Normal, electronic edition

<idle musing>
Many decades ago now, I heard a sermon about the yoke that Jesus talks about in Matthew 11:30. He said it might be easy, but it's real. And the thing about yokes is that you have to continually adjust to them. You pull too hard in one direction and it rubs and you get a blister. You slow down, and the cart pushes you and about chops your head off. Anyway, you get the idea—it's a continual adjustment. Life isn't static, why should we expect our spiritual life to be static!
</idle musing>

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