It’s another fine balance. I don’t mean that like Stan Laurel’s ‘That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into’. I mean another fine balance, as in Rohinton Mistry’s book ‘A Fine Balance’. But that is another subject.
Poured out or wrung out?
Like Paul the apostle we are to be ready to be poured out like a drink offering on the altar of the saints’ faith. Meaning, I think, that every Christian, and especially leaders, are to be spent in serving God’s people to help them in their faith and life. Spent, poured out: a continual giving, even to the extent of having nothing much left to give. I can relate to that, going to bed pretty tired after a day in the vineyard of the church and its needs.
But are we supposed to be wrung out? Isn’t that what spent means? Maybe, but is there a difference between being weary but able to replenish and start again the next day, and being so done in and nerve-wracked as to find it unsustainable?
In my experience this work does take you there sometimes, and in that case you will need some respite and/or healing pretty soon, in order to get back to normal.
Sometimes you get the impression that Christians are supposed to float along, able to avoid stress and maintain a placid life with time in prayer and quietness and sufficient rest, because ‘God doesn’t want you to overdo it’. People who can do that tend to have the luxury of not working full time or having much responsibility. One brother told me long ago ‘I always make sure I’m never tired’ and I wondered what planet he inhabited. That’s not faith, it’s selfishness.
Still, it is important to get time aside with God, and even to rest up sometimes. If you’re getting ratty and wish everyone would push off, if your health is failing and you dread tomorrow, then it’s time to get off the treadmill for a time. Jesus told his disci0ples once ‘Come aside and rest a while’ (Mark 6.31+).
But of course even then the crowds found them and once more he was poured out.
