The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. Psalm 104:19

Planet earth with its diameter of 7, 926 miles (measured through the poles), rests basically on nothing, yet the earth races along its elliptical orbit around the sun in exactly three-hundred sixty-five and a-quarter days.  Isaac Newton defined this force in his “law of gravitation” when he said that the gravitational force is directly proportional to the product of two masses (e.g., the Earth and the Moon) and inversely proportional to the distance between them squared.  The entire universe is held in harmony by an intricate system of balances and tensions.

Balance is unquestionably the key to the universe–an intricate system of forces to counteract other forces and the result is harmony.  The seasons create a balanced climate which gives us enough change in the environment to add zest to our routine.  Where there is a lack of balance, there is one extreme or another, which produces monotony.  The changes in our seasons serve almost as a gigantic pendulum which swings from the winter to summer solstice, bringing the cycle of spring, summer, fall and winter.  Psychologists tell us that any climate that never changes produces boredom and psychological unrest.

God knew that humankind, His creation, needed an environment with a semblance of balance, including changes in seasons.  But balance is just as necessary in our lives as it is in nature, for balance is the mainspring of a happy, normal life.  Whenever you cease to maintain balance, your approach to life is lopsided, and therefore all the rest of the world seems wrong.  Yet to be perfectly realistic, balance is not easily attained, for it is far easier to be an extremist in any area of life than to use discretion in maintaining balance.  This is where fads or trends come into the picture.  To conform, we reject the traditional and are quickly willing to accept the new extreme as exciting, not understanding that being different is not always being better.

C.S. Lewis has well said that errors usually come into the world in pairs–pairs of opposites.  Most of us spend a great deal of time thinking about which extreme is worse; then, we become so firmly convinced that one extreme is bad that we unconsciously are drawn to the opposite extreme.  Have you ever noticed that very few people drive the speed limit?  Most people are either ten miles an hour over the speed limit or else fifteen miles an hour under it.  How do you keep a sense of balance in a world of extremes?

Notice that the very principle of balance presupposes a point of reference between two extremes–a mid-position that gives some rhyme and reason to the extremes of life.  Webster says balance is, “to bring to an equipoise or state of equilibrium.”  It brings the extremes into play with each other.  Now, a person who has placed his faith in God has a third dimension to his life, one that becomes triangular, and this allows you to look at life in a different perspective. The Bible says that if a person be in Christ, you become a new person.  A pendulum swings back and forth from a fixed point, but without that point of fixation or reference it would have no usefulness or purpose at all.  Anyone who maintains balance does not gravitate from one extreme to another as a pendulum swings back and forth. There is a fixed point of reference.

God can give you that balance – that fixed point of reference.  May I hasten to say that in our “drug and tranquilizer age” a lot of people are frustrated, moving from one extreme to the other.  Friend, I’ll say it again: God alone gives you balance.

 

Resource reading: Job 38:2-11