October, 2026

​​​​

Greetings,

​​

I wrote this two years ago, but it seems relevant today as much as it did then. October has always been one of my favorite months. Probabl because it is the month of my birthday. If you follow astrology at all it means I was born under the sign of Libra. The sign of the scale. I am not convinced that it has anything to do with the circumstance or time of my birth. But I do like things to be balanced and fair. Which also means in this current season of political fighting I get distressed at the ads that call names, the rhetoric that is untrue or only partially true that throws shade on another person. The backbiting, the name-calling, the general feeling of unfairness in our political world today I find very unbalanced and very distressing. Maybe some of you feel the same way.

​

So how do we restore balance? One way it to remember where to keep our focus. I was a P.E. and health major in college. One of the classes I had to take was gymnastics. I had to learn how to teach all the apparatus, which means I had to learn how to do all the apparatus. That included the balance beam. Four inches wide. We started on the floor and worked our way up to the full height of a balance beam 4 feet above the floor. One of the best pieces of advice I learned about walking on the balance beam was where to focus my eyes when walking on the balance beam. It wasn't on my feet, it was straight ahead, out in front of me. Where my focus was, my head was, and my body would follow.

​

Where is your focus? Is your focus on one side or the other? On the various positions and opinions that are floating around? Or is your focus on the one thing, the main thing constant, God as shown in the person of Jesus the Christ?

​

If you are feeling unbalanced, feeling off kilter with all that is going on, maybe it is time to shift your focus.

​

In Christ, 

Pastor Pat

​