One night, on the way back from Colorado a couple of weeks ago, somewhere in the panhandle, we began to notice that we could see more stars than normal.  Pulling off the highway onto a lonely dirt road, we turned off the car, got out and found ourselves staring at the awesomeness of a clear night sky.  There, in absolute splendor, were the big dipper, Orion, other constellations by the score, the Milky Way, and some brilliant light that had to be a planet rising out to the west.  It was cold out so we didn’t stay long.  But, for the brief moment we took in nature’s beauty, it was nothing less than a spiritual experience.  Have you ever noticed that, when you are out where artificial city lights don’t blind you to the greater light beyond, it’s absolutely impossible not to believe in God?

When I asked my son, Griffin, what he had learned about God while we were in Colorado, he said it was that God uses life experiences to help him write his music.  Griffin and I write music of a different kind.  But, my experience has been the same.  God takes what is visible to demonstrate, even reassure me about, what is invisible.  To some, perhaps, it’s too simple that simply staring at a night sky could inspire faith.  But, in his letter to the Roman believers twenty centuries ago, the apostle Paul wrote, “Ever since the creation of the world (God’s) eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.”  (Romans 1:20)  Among other things we have in common with our cavemen ancestors is that we have both learned something about God from staring at the stars.  What else could possibly punch a peak five miles higher than the level of the sea unless it was the very fingers of God pushing it up from underneath?

It had been fifteen years since I stood on the slope of a mountain intending to go down it on planks of wood just barely wider than my feet.  By the way, for those of you who asked, I actually did ski.  I’m curious as to why that wouldn’t be self-evident.  I was reminded that skiing is actually better suited to people who are young, rich and skinny.  But, that didn’t stop me.  At a minimum, I made some young, rich and skinny person feel better about their skills on the slopes.  Frankly, I was amazed at the way basic skills I hadn’t used in all those years came right back.  I was also amazed at the way God demonstrates what is invisible about him when you are standing in a place that is so visibly awesome and overwhelming and at the way God used some life and near death experiences to teach me, or re-teach me, some fundamental faith lessons.

Like the fact that life is a balancing act.  Now, to the children who, at four and five years of age were skiing circles around me, this may not seem that important.  Balancing for them seems to be as natural as breathing because their center of gravity is so low.  The older you get and the more your gravitational center is not so well centered, the more you appreciate the fact that life is very much about learning to keep your balance.  And, perhaps, with some activities like snow skiing, a person can become so skilled that, though they have to be cautious about balance, they don’t have to be consciously aware of trying.  In matters more significant, you can’t ever take balance for granted. 

Former President Clinton has been widely criticized for some of the decisions he made in the last few days he was in office.  Whatever your opinion might be about some of those decisions is one thing.  What is worthy of note is that, in the last weeks before he left office, he hardly slept at all.  He was consumed with using the power of the office that would soon be gone forever.  However, in reflecting on his scandal-ridden presidency he said, “Every important mistake I’ve ever made in my life, I’ve made because I was too tired.”  (“Backstage at the Finale,” Newsweek, February 26, 2001)  Is it any less true of us?  If you could just take back the things you’ve done and said in your life when you were exhausted how different would your life look now?  If Bill Clinton’s example of unbalanced living doesn’t get you’re attention, perhaps Jesus’ attempt at balanced living will. 

After Jesus fed the 5,000, the very next thing he did is recorded in Matthew’s gospel.  “After he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.  When evening came, he was there alone.”  (Matthew 14:23)  Then, just before his arrest, trial and crucifixion, “Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’”  (Matthew 26:36, NIV)  After the crowds had gotten almost all there was of him and before the cross took what was left, Jesus balanced out those demands with time alone with his Father in prayer.  There is some praying you can do on the run.  But, there is some praying you just can’t do until you set aside everything else in order to pray.  And, if you don’t balance out the stress of what is taken out of you with the nourishment of the soul only prayer supplies, in time, your life gets out of balance.

Life is a balancing act.  We are multi-faceted creatures, by the design of the same God who made the mountains.  If we neglect any part of our being then, eventually, our center of gravity will become very un-centered.  Six times over three days I leaned too far one way or the other coming down the mountain and came down harder than I planned when I got out of balance.

As just one example of unbalanced living, have you noticed the role fatigue plays in your family?  Two income families and the commutes that go with them, soccer games, little league, concerts, church, school.  The list is endless.  Despite the growing evidence that children do better when they focus on fewer activities than our culture encourages, most families, allowing their children multiple extra-curricular activities, do well to have one or two meals a week around the table because of everyone’s out-of-family commitments.  One of the things that is undermining so many of our families is simple fatigue.  We’re tired.  We’re so tired that, even when we do finally have a night at home, we’re too tired to interact meaningfully.  A man who left the ministry years ago told me that, when he and his wife finally made the decision to do so, it was because they realized they were so tired they were dangerous.  Not many have the courage to make that admission and then do something about it.  But, even this past week we heard of yet another child suffocating in an overheated car apparently because his over-fatigued mother forgot to take him out of the car for an entire workday.  You can get so fatigued that you are dangerous to those you love most.  If Jesus, who had come to save the world, knew the world could get along without him while he got away to regain his balance, what is it that makes us think this world can’t do without our presence while we regain ours? 

There is no way of knowing for sure but it would be interesting to know how many divorces that appear to have their roots in squabbles over money or childrearing or in-laws or adultery really have their roots in nothing more than simple fatigue.  Decisions made when we are exhausted are rarely the ones with which we can afford to live.  Years ago, over a cup of coffee one afternoon, Dr. Daniel Vestal told me “one of the most spiritual things we can do is get a good night’s rest.”  Physical sleep may not seem very spiritual.  But, that’s only because we’re the ones who so recklessly draw clear lines of distinction, which God does not, between the physical and the spiritual parts of ourselves.  The scripture commands us to “present (our) bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is (our) spiritual service of worship.”  (Romans 12:1) 

There is no part of us that is not intricately related to our soul.  There is nothing you can do or fail to do with your body that is not of spiritual consequence.  When you have sexual intercourse, that is a spiritual event with spiritual consequences, whether you are married or not.  When you overeat yourself into oblivion or abuse alcohol or sex in ill fated attempts at self-medicating, those may be physical and psychologically rooted expressions of desperation.  They are also spiritual events.  Even the most spiritual part of you can’t stay balanced if it is being drained by the imbalance of an exhausted mind or body.  Life is a balancing act. 

At the Frierson wedding yesterday Bud said something funny while we were taking pictures and I found myself laughing almost uncontrollably.  Then, I went to the reception and found myself laughing at the simplest things.  And, then we had dinner with some couples from the church last night and I found myself laughing at the silliest stories.  And, then, as I awoke this morning, I found myself feeling guilty for having so much fun.  Where, literally in hell, did that guilt come from except from hell itself?  Ecclesiastes 3:4 says that there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.”  (NASV)  We buried Polly Morrill on Wednesday, too many years early.  After standing over her casket, rejoicing with friends at the birth of a new family and the laughter that came with it helped me regain my balance.  By Saturday, it was time, by the hopeful grace of God, to laugh and dance again. 

Life has to be lived in the balance between grief and hope.  It also has to be lived within boundaries of right and wrong.  Coming down the slopes on one particular run, I came to a juncture in the trails with a huge sign with arrows pointing two different directions.  One direction was toward a blue slope made for people still learning.  The other arrow pointed toward a double-black diamond slope made for the extremely skilled.  It didn’t take long to figure our which way I should go.  This wasn’t a choice between the lesser of two adrenaline rushes.  For me, the choice between blue and double black was the choice between life and death.  The truth is, that sign saved my life.  That’s what boundaries and the signs that point the way to them were designed to do.

Many of us know that wonderful verse of scripture in the book of Romans that says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  (Romans 8:1)  Few are as familiar with what precedes it.  Before Paul made that great confession that is the cornerstone of our eternal hope, he said, “if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. . . . so the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.” (Romans 7:7, 12)  In other words, God’s moral and spiritual boundaries ultimately led Paul to Christ.  Had it not been for the boundaries, Paul would have never known he needed Christ. 

On the slopes of the mountain, there are orange markers all along the way that warn skiers about getting outside the boundaries.  There is nothing to prevent you from crossing them.  But, outside the boundaries, you’re on your own.  Trees, stumps and avalanches, they’re all out there.  Life is in the boundaries.  Death is outside.  We don’t pay much attention to the Ten Commandments anymore in our culture.  Commonly, we mock God’s name, we are an idolatrous people, we sleep around before and after marriage.  We do it all because, for a while, we think we can do it with impunity.  But, is there any evidence that we are better off for it?  If you are sleeping with someone to whom you’re not married right now is your life really better for it?  And, even if it appears to be, what guarantees do you have about what’s around the next bend?  Just as life is a balancing act, it must be lived within the boundaries. 

Finally, life doesn’t happen unless we get up when we fall.  Unless we begin again.  I have to confess that, the point at which I most felt my age on the slopes was not so much when I fell down but when I tried to get up.  Falling down is easy.  Getting up again, and again, that’s the tough part.  And, the only people who don’t fall are the people who don’t get on the slopes.  If you ski you fall.  It comes with the territory.  It’s that way with life, too.  If you live, you fall.  More specifically, if you live, you die.  It’s what happens after you fall, and die, that makes the difference.  Jesus told Nicodemus, “‘you must be born again.’”  (John 3:7, NASV)  It was a warning.  If you don’t have a beginning with God you have no hope.  It was also a promise.  No matter how hard you fall God’s grace means you always have a chance to begin again.

It seems almost impossible to me that it was eleven years ago, almost to the day, that I stood over Jeanie Calhoun’s grave.  She was only sixteen.  For over a year she fought one of the bravest battles with cancer I’ve ever witnessed.  But, in the end, it took her down.  In the fall, before she died in the spring, I went to visit her one day in her home.  She was so sick she couldn’t raise her head off of the pillow in her bed.  So, I pulled a chair up close.  I held her hand and she cried and I joined her.  She said, “I’m scared.  I don’t know what’s happening to me.”  She asked me to read hymns and scripture to her to get some reassurance about that.  One passage I chose read this way.  “Humble yourselves . . . under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you at the proper time . . . after you have suffered for a little, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.”  (1 Peter 5:6, 10, NASV)