Balance & Rest

Balance. 

What is your first thought when I say that word? 

Yoga poses? A scale that has the same amount on both sides? A concept that is hard to grasp? The schedule you try and make each day? 

Its funny how something that seems so simple on the surface level is actually so hard to incorporate into our daily lives. It is so often something we strive for, yet fail to achieve. Trust me, I am in the trenches of that struggle with you. I am not writing this to you as someone who has found an answer but as someone who is asking the Lord each day to help her to have better balance. 

For me, balance has been something I have struggled with my whole life. Not only have I never been very physically balanced, but I haven’t been very emotionally and mentally balanced either. I have been trying for years, on my own strength, to figure out what it looks like to achieve balance. Balance in time to play versus time to work. Balance in holding yourself accountable to get a task done and having grace when life just happens etc. 

Back in Guatemala, I finally realized that my earthly attempts at balance were not enough. I was desperate to hear and see what my Father said about balance. 

I prayer and asked “God, what does biblical balance look like?” His response was one I wouldn’t have come to on my own. “Ecclesiastes 3” he told me. 

So I grabbed my Bible, knowing this was a section of scripture I have probably read 30 times on the race already. I had even shared with the women at ministry about what the Lord had showed me previously in this section of scripture. 

Once I flipped to the section and begin to read God gave me new eyes to see this passage through a new light. None of the new wisdom discredited the old knowledge he had given me, but took me deeper into understanding balance through his eyes.

 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 CSB

“There is an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven: 

 a time to give birth and a time to die;

a time to plant and a time to uproot;

a time to kill and a time to heal;

a time to tear down and a time to build; 

a time to weep and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn and a time to dance;

a time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;

a time to embrace and a time to avoid embracing;

a time to search and a time to count as lost;

a time to keep and a time to throw away;

a time to tear and a time to sew;

a time to be silent and a time to speak;

a time to love and a time to hate;

a time for war and a time for peace.”

 

What does the worker gain from his struggles? I have seen the task that God has given the children of Adam to keep them occupied. He has made everything appropriate in its time…”

God has made everything appropriate in its time and there is a time for everything. There is a moment to feel sadness but also a moment to be filled with joy. That is balance. Balance is allowing what is appropriate in each moment to be. 

This truth hit me like a truck. To walk in balance through life with Christ is to create space for both sides to be experienced. To create space to dance and also to mourn. If we spent all of our time rejoicing or all of our time mourning, then there actually wouldn’t be balance. 

The beautiful thing is God is actually knocking at the door of your heart asking to meet you on both sides and in the balance. 

I imagine this by thinking about how God will sit with me and console me in the depths of sorrow, just as much as he will run and be silly with me in the midst of happiness. You don’t have to leave God in one moment or the other, but actually he is the one who created balance and wants to meet you in that. 

I have had to actively change my mindset to be in line with God’s view of balance. In the moments when I am mourning change, but feel pressure to just be happy, I am reminded that there is a time for everything. In moments when resting is what my soul, mind and body need, but I feel pressure to keep running at the pace of the world, I am reminded that God created rest and desires to abide in the rest with me. 

Rest tends to be such a hard concept for our minds to comprehend when we live in a society of ever quickly increasing sales quotas and access to everything all the time. It actually feels impossible to hit pause and come away from it all for just a moment. Being on the race it has been a little bit easier to find time to rest, but there are still so many things and people bidding for my attention. Although, what I have found is that when I don’t first rest in the secret place with just me and the Lord, I can’t pour out to others. When I am running on empty, the things I was scared to hit the pause on to begin with become way less fruitful and beneficial for me or those around me. 

I read an incredible book during our time in Africa called Garden City by John Mark Comer. In this book, he discusses the balance of work and rest. In this book, he shared how sabbathing is actually the time when the Lord is able to bring healing to our hearts.

I don’t know about you, but I had not thought of it that way previously. It immediately makes me think about when you get surgery, what do you have to do in order to get better? Rest! If you don’t rest, you will probably be in a lot of pain and may even cause the wound to never fully heal. If that analogy was applied to our spiritual life, imagine how many open wounds we are running around with as a society because we have such a negative stigma towards rest. 

In Matthew 11 we find Jesus ending the chapter by sharing with believers about what his burden is like. 

 

Matthew 11:28-30

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

 

I love how through this verse Jesus tells us to learn from him. The crazy thing is God actually was the first one to establish rest and we see this right at the beginning of Genesis 2 (Genesis 2:2-3) when God finished creating and on the 7th day he rested. He found balance in finishing the work he had just completed and then he rested. If Matthew 11 tells us to learn from him and find rest for our souls what then is keeping us from finding this balance? Is it pride because it says that Jesus was humble and lowly in Matthew 11. Do we think we are greater than the need for balance of rest and work? 

I don’t know about you, but I need Jesus to heal my soul continuously and to help me find balance every single day. With that comes the need to be wrapped up in his rest too. I want to rest in the stability of his protection and love for me knowing that whatever comes he is enough to walk me through it and help me find rest and balance. 

 

With Love,

Kalyssa

 

A Link for those interested in reading Garden City by John Mark Comer:

https://www.amazon.com/Garden-City-Work-Being-Human/dp/0310337348/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Garden+City&qid=1632271398&s=books&sr=1-1

 

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General Update:

My squad and I are offically back in the Unites States! Thank you for all the prayers for safe travels for us. I offically fly back to Idaho on May 29th and am so excited to see where the Lord takes me from here. I have several blogs that are headed your way about what is next for me and wrapping up the race! Stay tuned!