If you are struggling with trying to lead a balanced life, this is a great book for you. Bruce Miller says, I don’t want to lead a balanced life but a fulfilled life lived in Rhythm.
What does he mean by this? Bruce has discovered that we operate in the seasons of life. There is the season of harvest where we work really hard to reap the crops and there is the winter season of life where we rest and regain the strength we need to run the race well. Bruce says we need to get back to understanding Chronos time and Kairos time. Chronos time is the calendar and this relates to the seasons in our lives. We have seasons of being single, married, with children, etc. We have to learn to live life to the fullest in these seasons of our lives and not beat ourselves up over what we can’t do, what we don’t have, and what we want to do in the future.
Bruce says that burnout doesn’t happen as a result of working hard but rather burnout happens because our lives are unfulfilled. We must come to the point of learning to live in the season of life in which we find ourselves. We can also look forward to and draw strength from the seasons we are looking forward to.
Bruce makes a case for the Sabbath rest that God gave to us. We are terrible at resting. By the way, resting isn’t the same thing as being lazy. I know lots of people who work hard at being lazy. We must learn to take the rest that God gave us as a gift. We cannot keep going at a wide open pace and continue in the long-term. Learn to rest.
Be at peace with the stage of life you are in right now. Ride the wave of life where God has placed you. You never get this stage of life back.
Bruce is right, this is a great message, we need to let it sink in. There is a lot of the wisdom of Solomon in this book.
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-15 NLT
For everything there is a season,
a time for every activity under heaven.
2 A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to harvest.
3 A time to kill and a time to heal.
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
4 A time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance.
5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
6 A time to search and a time to quit searching.
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
7 A time to tear and a time to mend.
A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
8 A time to love and a time to hate.
A time for war and a time for peace.
9 What do people really get for all their hard work? 10 I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. 11 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. 12 So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. 13 And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.
14 And I know that whatever God does is final. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God’s purpose is that people should fear him. 15 What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again.
Ronnie
