A Balanced Life

I am sure we are all familiar with the phrase "a work/life balance". 

However, I would venture to say that, whilst we are familiar with it in principle, it is rarely a reality in our lives.  Instead, for most of us, our lives are dominated by our work.  Far from the '9-5' cliché, we find our work encroaching on our evenings and our weekends.  With a growing trend in flexi-hours and working from home, we are now unable to easily separate these two aspects of our lives.

Sometimes I feel that my attempts at a work/life balance are rather like a fat kid on a see-saw.  They are unfairly weighted.  My life is dominated by my work, and my attempts at a 'life' are like the weasly kid suspended in the air at the other end of the see-saw.

This is something with which I have wrestled and struggled for a long while.

I felt that work was something to get through and something to endure until the weekend.  It was separated from the rest of my life and was of no importance to God.

But recently I feel that God has been showing me how important my work is, and how important work is to all of our lives.

God created Adam and Eve to work in the Garden of Eden.  Work wasn't a punishment, but a blessing:

      "God created human beings;

      he created them godlike,

      Reflecting God's nature.

      He created them male and female.

      God blessed them: 

      'Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!

      Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,

      for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.'"

     

      [Genesis 1:27-28 MSG]

God cares about my work along with all other aspects of my life: my friendships, my relationships, what book I'm reading, what film I'm watching, what I'm enjoying, what I'm struggling with. 

He cares about it all, and He wants us to acknowledge Him in it all.

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men."

[Colossians 3:23 NIV]

Rather than striving for a work/life balance, I am aiming for a balanced life.   A life balanced with work and relaxing and resting and playing and studying and relationship and solitude and eating and fasting and praying and thinking and indulging and refraining and talking and listening ...

A balanced life.

Hide and Seek

Whenever I re-watch a film that has a plot twist, or a key turning point in it, I find myself feeling tense, even though I know what's coming.  I hold my breath and curl up my toes, just in case it will help to change the fate of my favourite characters.  I silently - and sometimes not so silently - urge them to turn around, or get to the phone in time, or not take that route home etc., hoping that somehow I will have the power to alter the outcome.

It is the same whenever I read the story of Adam and Eve.

We can't ever begin to imagine what life was like for the first couple before that moment.  To know what it was like to live in complete and perfect relationship with God and with each other.  To be "naked and unashamed." 

What I had always understood about this story, though, was Adam and Eve's reaction: when they heard God later in the day, they hid from Him.

"I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

[Genesis 3:10, NIV]

We can all understand and relate to this desire to hide when we mess up, or make mistakes.  We hide from God, we hide from others and, sometimes, we even hide from ourselves.

But why do we hide?  And why did Adam and Eve hide?  They had spent time getting to know God before the events of Genesis 3, building and developing a relationship with Him and experiencing His love and faithfulness.  They had no reason to doubt or question Him, He had provided good things for them and had given them everything that they needed.

So why did they hide from Him?

John Townsend writes,

"Why didn't they run to God, tell Him what they'd done, and ask Him to help them?  They mistakenly saw God as someone who would hurt and not heal them.  So they hid."

They hid, and we hide, because we're afraid, because we're naked.  We are vulnerable and our 'true' selves are exposed.  We want to cover up and pretend that everything is okay.  So we sew metaphorical fig-leaves together to hide behind, so that no one will know the truth about us. 

And we are scared of people seeing our true selves, because we think that there will be judgment.  From other people, and from God.

But God's love doesn't seek us to judge us.  It searches for us to love us and forgive us and heal us and restore us.  And His love casts out our fear.

"There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love."

[1 John 4:18, MSG]

Instead of hiding when we feel naked and vulnerable and ashamed and afraid, let's seek God's love and grace and forgiveness, for we are sure to find them.