Shifting the Balance

Written by Ros Holliday

How do I fit it all in? What should my priorities be? How do I balance work, leisure, church, family? How many times do we ask these kind of questions? Many, if not all of us, struggle with this issue daily. How can I prioritise rightly in the face of so much? This was the question we posed Helen Wilcox who spoke at the 21st June day conference in London.

We were not given a simple or easy answer but were helped to think Christianly about how to stay focussed. In the Bible there are two key commissions, firstly the Creation Commission [Genesis 1 v28] and secondly the Great Commission [Matthew 28 v18-20]. There are two schools of thought regarding these, one which says that only the Great Commission of evangelism is important, and the other that states both commissions - ruling and enjoying creation and evangelism - are important. After discussion we felt that the second school of thought that embraces creation and evangelism was key, given God's present creation and his new heaven.

However this did not answer our question. How do I prioritise? How do I live now for the not yet?

Later on in the morning, we studied three characters from the Bible to see what we could learn. In Exodus 18 Moses needed some advice from Jethro as he was struggling under the weight of so much responsibility. Jethro's advice was to give others responsibility and to delegate, resulting in Moses enduring. The story of Mary and Martha is a well-known passage from the Gospels [Luke 10 v38-42]. Mary is sitting listening to Jesus whereas Martha is rushing around doing the housework. Our first priority should be listening to God as Mary does, [however doing the housework is important too!] In Paul's letters we can see his priority and worldview [Philippians 3 v12-16]. Paul has a forward view focussed on heaven and he lets heaven and God's future glory shape him.

So how does all this help us to prioritise? The key has to be, like Paul, keeping our eyes on the future glory in heaven, listening to Jesus, like Mary, delegating responsibility, like Moses; embracing both creation and evangelism in order to make decisions about our priorities in God's present creation. Sadly no simple answer, but we did come away from the day with good Biblical principles to base our decisions on.