Juggling?

How do you do with the juggling? Maybe that's not what it feels like to you - this 'life-balance' thing! That's precisely what it feels like to me, to us - wifey LJ included. Maybe for you its like some sort of harmonious, synchronized process that flows seamlessly in congruence with your spiritual growth, personal development etc. Not for me/us! Actually, increasingly, I'm coming to see that this juggling - and remember some of the 'items' being juggled are of such inestimable worth and startling fragility - is precisely the 'soil' in which my spiritual growth and personal development take place.

One powerful verse from Paul's first epistle to the Corinthian church which has always had significant meaning to me comes to mind in this context, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (I Co. 10.31) Why that verse? Well I think growing up, and in the preponderance of messages on Christian living that I hear, I thought/hear growing in love for the Lord and developing spiritually were/are things that take place in some sort of vacuum - let me break it to you they don't! For the vast majority of Christ-followers it's not in some remote, tumultuous part of the globe as a brave missionary that we will fight for spiritual growth; it's not leading some dynamic ministry praying for thousands and seeing the dead raised, but in the midst of the juggle, the stuff of daily living that we can most develop Christlikeness, that we MUST develop Christlikeness. We are to be Christlike in real life: holding down a job, loving wife, kids, extended family, keeping healthy, reading the word every day, serving the local church, loving the church family, balancing the books, consistently growing in holiness, driving on the roads, and checking in on what shows our kids are watching. Know what I mean?

Man I want to juggle well, I want to love my Lord, wife, kids, and church family well and still feel like I'm standing and flourishing being light and salt to a dying world. Going to need serious power from above and those old-school biblical traits of perseverance and steadfastness.
How about you? You going to re-commit to it again?

Simon