Friday, February 28, 2020

The Journey Continues February 2020

The Journey Continues…

For the past four years, when the third week in January arrives, I have taken advantage of the
opportunity to attend a clergy retreat through the Penn Central Conference. Each year, the planning
committee for the retreat selects a theme that is designed to help an aspect of our lives and our ministry.  This year, the theme chosen was “Peace in the Balance”. Honestly, I couldn’t have asked for a topic that is more needed in my life. As a pastor, it is extremely challenging to find balance in my professional life and in my personal life. But pastors aren’t unique in the need to find “Peace in the Balance”. I often talk to people who struggle to find balance in their lives and even more who struggle to achieve peace. We talked a lot during the retreat about the reasons why we lose balance, and we spent time learning ways to help regain the balance we have lost. Now for those who appreciate visuals (like me), it helps to see an image of what we are learning. So here is a picture of balance:

                     _____________________________
                     ______________^______________

With this image, the beam is in perfect balance. If we could keep our lives in balance like this,
then we would be peaceful and happy. But as each day unfolds, outside forces interact with us that are beyond our control. Accidents happen. Distractions arise. Unexpected events materialize. People make choices that affect us in ways we never planned for. Every single event in our lives has the potential to move us away from the center, and you don’t have to go very far from center before becoming unbalanced. When you add in the emotional ups and downs of these events, the challenge of maintaining balance becomes even harder. For example, how many times in your life have you made good decisions when you are angry or frustrated? Probably never, right? How many times in your life have you held a positive vision of the future when you are grieving or depressed? Again, probably never. In either case, finding balance is even harder to achieve because of the additional challenges from our emotions.


Although we can try to control everything that goes on in our lives (which actually leads to even
greater imbalance), there are practices we can put to use to handle the challenges that come our way.
We start by changing the foundation. A different foundation will produce much better results, and it is
not as hard to change the foundation as you may think. Here is a visual of what we learned during our

sessions:

                                  _________________________
                                  /                                                \

                                 /                                                  \

Do you see how much easier it would be to keep this beam balanced as opposed to the beam
resting on a single point? With the first example, one step away from center will cause the beam to be
unbalanced. Whenever we rely solely on ourselves – and our efforts to be in control – to keep our lives balanced, then we are trying to keep balance on a single point. But with the second example, you can go all the way to the edges and the beam will remain balanced. So the key is to widen our base, right? But how do we do that? Actually, widening the base is not as hard as you think. In fact, by keeping things simple and basic, we can create a wider base that will help us maintain balance in our lives and achieve peace at the same time.

We widen our base by getting back to basics and keeping things simple: setting aside time each
day to read the scriptures and to pray. But it’s not the quantity of Bible verses that we read every day
that makes a difference. It is quality in how we read the Bible. Even if we read only one verse a day, if that verse is read the right way, we can change our perspectives and achieve peace in the balance.
Likewise, it is not the quantity of time we spend in prayer, it is the quality of time we spend in prayer.
When we spend quality time in prayer (I’m not talking about reciting a laundry list of requests like a child sitting on Santa’s lap...I’m talking about spending time in the presence of God that gives us the
opportunity to reconnect with our Creator in a spiritual way), then we can recognize a sense of peace
and balance that God has always been willing to share with us. The only thing that has been missing
is our awareness of God’s presence all around us.

I don’t have the space needed this month to explain how we can read the scriptures and pray in
ways that are transformative in our lives. But over the next few months, I will share some of what I
learned the past few days with you. If you want to look ahead, you can look up “Lectio Divina” online at
https://www.thereligionteacher.com/lectio-divina-steps/ and you can look up “Body Prayer” online at
https://wisdomwayofknowing.org/resource-directory/prayer-of-gesture-and-movement/. There is a two minute video at the bottom of the web page that shows you what a “body prayer” looks like, but I’ll describe things in more detail next month.

Whether you look things up now or wait for me to share with you over the next few months (or
you do both), my hope is to draw all of us closer to God so that we can handle the storms of life and
find peace in the balance. Life will push us to the extremes; we can’t avoid it no matter how hard we
try. But we don’t have to go through life helpless and out of balance. We can be prepared for those
extremes by using the tools that are available to help us maintain balance until the storm passes.

The Journey Continues…
Pastor Dave

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
I do not give to you as the world gives.
So do not let your hearts be troubled,
and do not let them be afraid.”
- John 14:27
















No comments:

Post a Comment