³¹ “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ ³² These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. ³³ Seek the Kingdom of God^[a] above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

~Matthew 6:31-33

At times, life is too much. Like, it just is. For people trying to live a decent life, which I think is most us, trying to fluidly juggle the balls of spouse, children, career, house, civic engagement and whatever else, is often difficult to do. God forbid you lose your balance, and let the “children” ball fall, and now your looking at your babies falling on their heads. Or you take your eyes off of the “spouse” ball and it ends up ricocheting off of your head and rolling off somewhere, and now you don’t know where your spouse went.

The personal challenge of juggling these balls often drives us closer to God, or at least, I’m suggesting that it should.  He is the only one who can help us manage it all. But sometimes  as we draw closer to Jesus, the problem that draws us closer, the juggling act, still remains our focus. We come to the Lord saying “help me keep all these balls in the air” and we keep our eyes on the balls and never even make eye contact with God. Can you see this image? Us, the jugglers, standing at the feet of this huge, immense, giant of a God while he looks down at us, mildly amused.

All the while, our hands are getting tired, our shoulders are cramping from holding up our arms, our palms are sweaty from the nervous energy of trying not to drop the balls. But to really receive the help we need from God, we have to focus our eyes on Him. This focus requires that we drop all the balls (figuratively speaking). Scary, I know.

If we are to go to God, we have to seek him for who He is–the great and everlasting God. We can’t go to God and still be consumed with the balancing all of the balls. We go to God not only because he can help us juggle, but because he is majestic and mighty and gracious and good and kind and holy. The Beginning and the End. The one true and living King. Going to God and really seeking him and worshipping him, getting distracted if you will, by his glory and power, it makes us want to take our focus off the balls and direct it all toward God. Once we really focus on the Lord and learn more about who he is in all of his wonder, all of our other responsibilities, while still important, pale in comparison to giving our time and attention to the great and mighty God.

We go to God with our problems, but as we learn more about him, pray to him more, worship him more, our focus begins to shift and all of a sudden, we realize that we don’t want to just seek God because he has the answer to our problems, but we want to seek him because he is beautiful and glorious. Spending time at the feet of God, with hands upraised in worship (and not juggling) helps us tap into who he really is–our hope, our peace, our lifeline. Once we lift up our eyes and realize that we are looking into the face of the great and everlasting God, everything else rolls away. The balls, they figuratively roll away.

As we continue to focus on God, he shows us how to handle it all, he guides us in our responsibilities. He teaches us telekenesis, let’s say–a way to keep the balls moving with much less effort. I realize I may have taken this metaphor a little too far, but the point is, when we go to God for who He is, and not just for what He can do for us, when we seek his face and not his hand, we truly connect with God and we are the better for it.