Don’t Load Your Horse to Heavy!

A few Sunday’s ago our church’s custodian Jose and I were chatting about life and he told me that often we tend to live our lives in state of imbalance.  He shared with me a story regarding travel in his country.  

Jose is from a small third-world village in South America, where some roads are not driven on by cars but instead traveled on only by horseback.  He mentioned a particular hill close to his home that requires a horse to get over and that people will load their horse with many bags that hang off the sides of the horse.  He said that often people will load their horse so heavy on one side that it will make the horse ride twisted and that is bad for the horse.  So instead of taking some of the stuff from the heavy side of the horse and putting it on the lighter side, the riders will actually get rocks and load the other side of the horse until the weight is more evenly distributed.  The result is that the horse ends up carrying much more than it should and the horse struggles to get up and down the hill. 

Jose was comparing this behavior with that of our own lives where we live in a state of imbalance.  We have two packs of time, one with the priorities in our lives and the other with “everything else” in our lives.  Instead of taking time out of our “everything else” pack and adding more time to our priorities pack we simply add more “everything else” time to our priorities pack essentially weigh down our lives.   

Here are some good examples:

Reading your Bible & Praying to God (priority) vs. Surfing web, watching TV, Facebook, etc. (not)

Dating your spouse (priority) vs. going out with friends, playing video games, working on “stuff”(not)

Spending time with your kids (priority) vs. all of the above(NOT!)

What he was saying is that we shouldn’t live your lives like a twisted horse, weighted down with meaningless things in your lives that take away from our priorities.  Try to live a balanced life putting your priorities evenly distributed amongst everything else in your life.  God first, spouse second and children third!  Also in the priorities pack you should include your commitment to the church, your extended family and of course, your work (just make sure that your work doesn’t become the heaviest thing in your priorities pack.)   Good word from my little friend!

By the way – Like everything else I write – this is just as much for me as it is for you.  I just hope I listen!

"A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight."—Proverbs 11:1

Brian