I’ve said it.  I’ve heard others say it.  You have probably said it too.  When the demands and pressures of life overwhelm me, I cry out, “I need more balance in my life!”  But is this really the answer?  Do I really need more balance?  In his book, Your Life in Rhythm, a friend of over twenty years who is a husband, father, pastor, author and entrepreneur (yes he does seem to be able to do it all), Bruce Miller, proposes that finding balance is an impossible task.  It doesn’t reflect reality.  Balance implies that life presents its challenges to us in nice, even batches.  There are no diapers that “blow out” unexpectedly right before walking out the door.  Illness only strikes when our calendar is open and work related emergencies never happen at midnight.  This just isn’t life.  It isn’t reality. So if balance isn’t the answer, what is?  Bruce suggests that we should seek  rhythm in our lives, not balance.

It makes intuitive sense.  God’s creation is full of rhythms.  On this planet we live a twenty-four hour day.  The sun rises and the sun sets.  Seasons come and go, and then come again.  All of nature responds to this ebb and flow of the seasons.  Bears store fat in the feeding months to hibernate through the winter.  Trees bloom in spring and put out their tender shoots that grow throughout the summer months.  In winter many trees seem all but dead, only to spring to life again to start the seasonal cycle over.  If this sounds familiar, Solomon, the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, related these rhythms to life. “There is a time for everything,and a season for every activity under the heavens” (Ecclesiastes 3:3, NIV).

I love Bruce’s comparison of balance versus rhythm:” Balance is a pose.  Rhythm is a dance. Balance is static. Rhythm is dynamic.  Balance is rigid. Rhythm is flexible.  Balance suggests you can have it all now.  Rhythm suggests you can have much, over time….Balance is a photograph.  Rhythm is a video” (p. 29).

It the plate of your life overflowing?   Why not consider giving up chasing balance in your life and try seeking a healthy series of rhythms?

Your Life in Rhythm by Bruce Miller.

Greg