BALANCE: DIFFICULT, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE!

William Andrew Dillard

A few years ago, while visiting in San Diego, California, a strange site appeared at the edge of the bay. There were these irregular rocks of various size and shape balanced to create numerous single poles. To say the site arrested attention is an understatement. How can this be?
It was then that I noticed the artist responsible for the phenomenon. While watching him busily engrossed in his creations, he paused to invite me to create a similar pole. With one rock stacked in balance upon the first one, all else failed. No matter how many times it was tried, the balance simply was not there. My immediate response was that there was a trick to it; that these particular rocks I was working with could not be so balanced to create a standing pole. The artist smiled, picked up my rocks and began balancing them one upon another to create the pole. I still do not understand how he could determine the exact center of gravity that allowed the rock to be in such perfect balance.
The reality of that strange encounter illustrates another form of balance so much more important. It is the balance of life that God calls upon His people to live, a life of righteousness in a world dominated by sin, personally, locally, nationally, and internationally. It seems the very moment one feels he is really accomplishing that balance, up jumps the devil, and once more the stark realization that we are still sinners is blatantly announced.
Once there was a ruler whose life failed miserably to measure up to that calling. His name was Belshazzar, the last king of the world empire of Babylonia. The words of his judgment were “Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin” which translates, “Your kingdom is numbered and finished, You are weighed in the balances and found wanting.” Immediately he was slain and the kingdom passed into the hands of the Medes-Persians.
The balance of life God requires cannot be understood nor accomplished at all by carnal minded men. But the good news is that it is both understood and accomplished by faith in Christ Jesus, in His person, words, and works by our repentance from sin, placing faith in Him. Is it difficult? To the unrepentant, it is impossible! Is it attainable? Indeed it is, not by just one person here and there, but by everyone who lives life in Christ. In that balance the believer is not imputed with sin, as Paul wrote to the Romans in 4:7-8, “Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” That, my friends, is the perfect, spiritual balance of life bringing the zenith of enjoyment and peace both here and hereafter. How is your balance?