Balance, Alignment and Peace in Total Health

It was May of 2016 and I stepped out of the end of a pilates class with a great group of people. I thought about my balance from a year before when I had a mild TBI and needed 10 months of physical therapy from three different specialists, one for vestibular balance. It occurred to me how the class and prior trainings had given me the alignment of both sides of my body and I was at peace, physically speaking.

It’s great to know that one hour of exercise can give us what we need to have a form of homeostasis with our bodies—the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes. My right and left foot were equally planted along with a developed core. Wholeness of our inner-selves relates, however, to have peace and unity with God and others in the faith (Ephesians 4:1-6). As we are strengthened and find balance, we strengthen others towards peace so that no other mortal word but “peace” brings such pleasure to us. Yet sometimes we have a disordered sense of peace, where our priorities are self-serving and out of wack with good intentions. 

We struggle and cannot enjoy peace because of a distortion of crossing the line of natural order in a form of personal and selfish regulation only, it’s much more than putting these things on myself! In the book of Job, his final appeal to God includes questions of wonder, such as Where is God in this? “If I have walked with falsehood and my foot has hastened to deceit; (Let me be weighed in a just balance, and let God know my integrity!) if my step has turned aside from the way and my heart has gone after my eyes, and if any spot has stuck to my hands, then let me sow, and another eat, and let what grows for me be rooted out.” Job 31:5-8 esv

Our spiritual selves, through the source of peace in Jesus—the Holy Spirit, is combined with our emotions and inner thoughts and also need to be in alignment with our Triune God. The balance we need in life includes a focus that is true north, keeping eyes forward and feet solidly planted. We can be stretched to the limits, and must persist and have perseverance to the end. We know how “the peace of all things is the tranquility of order. This lends to the peace of the body in the duly proportioned arrangements of its parts giving us our eternal law of the well-ordered and obedient life—-spiritual health in Christ. The peace of body and soul is the well-ordered harmonious life and health of the living and is both now and in the hearafter”, (a conclusive paraphrase I found in the premise of St. Augustine’s City of God, Book 19).

Pray: LORD God, give us your peace and health now as we live in the eternal light of Jesus Christ and the hope found only in Him. I confess I can be miserable when I see disordered lives and falsity playing out in the world and I am thrown off-balance. Straighten me out and show me Your way. LORD, when I turn into myself mistakenly and do not trust You, forgive me. Continue to help me serve YOU so I am aligned with your true and good principles, once again, and grant us your peace. Amen