Category Archives: Submitting to God

Balancing Act

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My grandson Micah was recently gifted with something I’d never seen before: a balancing bike. It resembles a small two-wheeler but has no pedals and relies on push-power to move.

Although Micah is only two, he took to it immediately and has learned to sail down the length of his driveway without taking a tumble. He shoves off, then lifts his feet, and whoosh, down he goes, managing the tricky art of balancing. At some point he’ll want a traditional bike with pedal-power, but for now he and his wheels are inseparable.

Parents find themselves coaching their young children to learn several other balance-related maneuvers too, the first of which is learning to sit up at about 6 months. After that it’s walking, pumping a swing, rollerblading, ice skating, and others, all needing balancing expertise.

Certain kids take to balancing naturally (like Micah) while others need prolonged assistance and encouragement. After children master the physical art of balancing (say, their pre-teen years), they’re ready for the much harder task of balancing their lives. For some, even that comes easily, but the rest of us struggle, wobbling or even crashing completely once in a while.

And that’s where God comes in.

Children don’t need him to hold the seat of a two-wheeler or run alongside, because he’s given that assignment to parents. His balance-assistance is for grown-ups, since we’re the ones so often doing it poorly by ourselves.

Years ago The Tonight Show’s host, Johnny Carson, invited a plate-spinning comedian to perform one of those chaotic demonstrations we all love, but this performer was absolutely the best. He kept a dozen plates spinning atop wiggly sticks while balancing three more on his forehead, nose, and chin.

Surely he’d had a triple-espresso before coming on stage. His body was a blur as he leapt back and forth along the sticks, rescuing some just seconds before they threatened to crash to the floor. He was a balancing aficionado.

Of course this isn’t what God means when he asks us to bring balance to our lives. But plate-spinning mania is often the way we feel day-to-day while trying to meet our varied commitments. So what do we do?

We follow Micah’s example, tackling one balancing act at a time. If he’d started with a balancing bike, a pedal bike, and a mountain bike all at once, he’d have been in for some nasty road rash. The same goes for spinning plates. Few is preferable to frenetic, and with the first broken plate, back-pedaling is our only solution.

All of us have limits on what we can accomplish, limited time, energy, money, motivation, skills. But if we let God hand us exactly what he wants us to balance, he’ll never let us tip out of balance. After that, if we add any “plates” against his advice, it won’t be long before we’ll need a broom, a dust pan, and a revised balancing-plan from the Lord.

“Letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.” (Romans 8:6)

Time-Out

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Watching sports on TV has never been an interest of mine, probably because I didn’t take time to learn the rules. I do remember watching the Chicago Blackhawks play hockey and won’t soon forget the fight I saw between two players. A referee quickly intervened, and the result was an official time-out for one of the players. I suppose that’s the NHL’s version of counting to 10, but no one wants to be forced to sit quietly while everyone else is still in the game.

Little children can relate. When mommy says, “Stop that behavior or you’ll have to have a time-out,” a two year old knows she means business. If he continues to disobey, he ends up in the time-out chair. During this confinement, toddlers and hockey players agree: two minutes is an eternity!

Little Jaxon, grandson of my friend Lois, recently found himself in a time-out. Although he cooperated with his sentence, a photo record (taken via Skype) depicts his struggle to wait out the two minutes.

Hockey players, children, and all of us share the frustration of forced time-outs, but believe it or not, God makes good use of them. He doesn’t always use them as discipline (toddler-style) or punishment (hockey-style) but often makes us sit still so he can work at setting up good plans for us. Unfortunately, none of his time-outs fit into two minutes. They’ve been known to last for weeks, months, or even years.

When that happens, it helps if we try to see things from God’s perspective. A seemingly interminable time-out is but a nano-second to him. He works long-range, is a God for the long-haul, and concerns himself with both the long-and-short of our lives.

When we find ourselves in time-out, we can be content if we’ll recognize that leaving too soon means stepping out from under God’s protective guidance about whatever it is we “just can’t wait” for.

We can prematurely terminate our time-out for something as trivial as an impulsive purchase or as serious as choosing the wrong marriage partner. Though staying in the wait-zone longer than two minutes is distasteful, moving forward when all indications are to “stay put” is like eating a beautiful steak before it’s been cooked.

But that’s not all.

When little Jaxon had completed his two minutes, he was given the pleasure of his mommy’s long-awaited time-in, accompanied by a hug and kiss of approval and love. If we bolt out ahead of God, we not only miss out on his plans, we lose the feel-good approval that comes when we hear, “Now is the time.”

When we let him decide our wait is over, all sorts of lovely surprises happen. That’s because while we were sitting in time-out, he was busy setting up the invisible specifics. And when he says, “Time-in!” we can be sure that whatever follows next will be worth the wait.

“The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride. Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit.” (Ecclesiastes 7:8-9)

Rigid Rules

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Growing up in a Christian home was a benefit, despite my not appreciating it at the time. My conservative parents wouldn’t let my siblings and I go to the movies (“an immoral industry”) or use playing cards (“tools of gamblers”) or dance (“worldly nonsense”). Our music choices were closely monitored, and as for no smoking and drinking? They didn’t even rate an explanation.

By today’s standards my brother, sister, and I were forced to live a narrow, regimented lifestyle. Of course we eventually tested what life was like apart from that parental list of no-no’s and in the end landed a bit short of them. But the older I get, the more I see that high standards are better than low ones.

Mom and Dad believed in scriptural principles. Although they understood the Bible’s concept of living under grace rather than law, they also touted the 10 commandments as a wise, healthy way to live. The two generalized “new” commandments given by Jesus in the New Testament were fleshed out, they said, in the Old Testament’s one-through-ten.

Most people balk at that list of laws or, for that matter, at any rules. The minute we’re told what we can’t do, we want to do it. Of course the root problem is that we all want to direct our own destinies, because it goes against us to take orders from anyone else. We say, “It’s my life, and I’ll live it any way I want.”

Sometimes I think God sets forth a list of should’s and shouldn’ts as a test. He says, “I know this makes you bristle, but because it’s Me asking you, will you trust that it’ll turn out best if you just do it?” We suck air between our teeth and wince, wanting to make him happy but hoping we can do it without having to fully comply.

It helps us to know Jesus never told his followers, “You’d better… or else!”

He left it up to them. Sometimes, after he had delivered the goods, people would turn on their heels and walk away. Although Jesus didn’t try to stop them, we can see disappointment tucked between the lines of Scripture. It wasn’t that he needed their loyalty or devotion. Divinity doesn’t need anything. It was that he felt sadness for them. Rejecting his message meant embracing a much less satisfying life, not to mention what might happen in the next world.

I’m fairly sure my parents were motivated by much the same kind of thinking God had as they studied his rules and then came up with their own. They were doing their best to set their children on a path toward wise, fulfilling futures. Though we struggled to break free of their restrictions at the time, we had to admit the intentions behind the rules were laced with love, the rules initiated by Mom and Dad…

…and the ones initiated by God.

“The trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me.” (Romans 7:14)