Are you unbalanced?

Today at lunch, I saw a church member I hadn't seen at the Sunday Holy Eucharist in a long time. "I've missed you," I said. I say that to a lot of people these days.

She responded: "My life has gotten so out of balance."

She was the second person today who'd said that to me.

Life gets out of balance quickly because of family, work, travel, sports.

With so many commitments and so much stress, we jettison God, prayer, Bible reading, and especially weekly worship.

We say we don't have time. We declare, sometimes sharply: "I need that extra time on Sunday for my family. For myself."

The problem is that without that focus on God in daily prayer, silence, Scripture reading; without the Holy Eucharist or other worship at least once a week, every week, we lose our balance.

We wobble, then fall, and hurt ourselves, like a bicyclist who crashes on the roadside.

God becomes a stranger to us. Our fellow Christians who are in the pews from Sunday to Sunday become strangers to us as well.

Before long, we either forget about God altogether; or if we think about him and the possibility of worshiping him on a Sunday, we hesitate because we feel guilty or otherwise awkward returning to church after a long absence.

Perhaps we think God or the pastor will be angry with us.

But the Good News is that God's is always seeking us, wanting us back, welcoming us into his loving embrace when we re-turn to him.

I'm glad my friend recognized that her life had become unbalanced, that she was spending too much time working, too little time simply being with God.

If you're unbalanced, why not restore the balance right now? Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. And pray: "Come Lord Jesus."

And come, worship Christ this Sunday. He'll be glad you did. You'll be glad you did.

And that feeling you discover in worship will be what you've been missing for a long time now:

Balance.