A Healthy Balance, part 4
One of the more sobering texts in the Bible is found in James 4.14. “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” In lieu of this inescapable reality, the following question must be considered. Do you have a healthy balance with your given allotment of time?
Let’s consider our time from three distinct areas of life. First, study your calendar. A healthy balance, biblically, will reveal some planned activities that relate to God. For example, Sunday morning worship should be penciled in every week. Not only does God command us to meet together weekly, but meeting with our family on Sunday to collectively praise our God, encourage one another, and be mutually strengthened should be craved by Christians. But Christianity is more than just worship. Does your calendar include fellowship with other Christians? Or, service opportunities for God? Hopefully we plan these things into our lives because they are important to us.
Second, consider your free time. We all have some down time that is not filled with appointments and emergencies. What does your free time reveal? Is Bible reading an opportunity or a chore? Is prayer time with your heavenly Father something that you long for or a regularly forgotten task? Are we wasting away online or enabling ourselves to grow in our service to God and one another?
Third, survey your overall life. For the previous ideas, we looked at the individual trees. Now, step back and examine the forest. Are you growing in Christ? We see in the scriptures that time can easily escape us (see Hebrews 5.12). Are you too busy climbing the ladder of success that you have lost sight of the proverbial stairway to heaven? If you are a husband or wife, are you taking the necessary time to meet the spiritual needs of your spouse as designed by God? If you are a parent with young children, have you provided adequate time and opportunity for them to come to know Jesus in your home?
As you probably realized, this article offers more questions than answers. It is designed for you to self-reflect. The truth, if we are able to be honest, is that very few of us have a healthy balance of time when examined in light of the scriptures. Our time reveals that our priorities often fail to follow in the steps of Jesus.
Although not intentionally related to the above quotation from James, Dr. Seuss adequately summarizes these thoughts in the following quotation. “How did it get so late so soon?” Given the current state of Christianity today, I cannot conclude this article with any thought better than Paul’s. “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13.11-12).