Life Balance

Sorry it has been a while since my last posting. Between internet and computer problems and just being a little busy I have not been posting.

One of my goals this year is to read 20 books. I have been up and down on my reading and yesterday after talking with a friend of mine I was inspired to refocus my reading and plan out what I will read this year. I like reading fiction and non-fiction, so I plan on mixing the two. Fiction is more for my own therapy and non-fiction is to learn and grow.

I want to advance my leadership this year and I know that I need to change some habits to do that. One thing is to be more structured and disciplined in my reading. My friend told me that if you can read 15 minutes a day, you can read most books in two weeks.

I just finished a fiction book by James Patterson called Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas. It is a romance book, which I rarely read. However a friend gave it to me and so I read it. I was surprized by one of the things I learned in the book. The author talks about the story of the five balls.

It goes like this.

“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls -family, health, friends and integrity- are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginning of balance in your life.”

I was talking with another friend of mine on Tuesday morning and he was sharing about some ministry stuff he was doing and then about work. He told me he knows the ministry stuff is more important than work and it reminded me of the five balls. He said that he could walk away from work, but he cannot walk away from family, God and ministry to hurting lost people.

I would call the integrity ball the spiritual ball. Our relationship with God. That ball is very important and should not be dropped, but it is usually the first one to be dropped. When you drop that ball you tend to think that you have more time to spend on juggling the other four balls.

I have found that when I drop the spiritual ball I tend to struggle even more keep the other four in the air. You see God wants to be first in our lives. He tells us that he does not want anything else in front of our relationship with Him. If we do that, the other balls are much easier to juggle because now our vision is clear and our purpose in life is clear. If your looking for some balance in your life think about that.

I hope that helped some of you as much as it did me.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.