What I mean by gyroscopic balance

as a metaphor

Technically — literally — it is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rotation (spin axis) is free to assume any orientation by itself.

Metaphorically I use the phenomenon to indicate the ability to keep one’s inner balance even in the midst of turbulence and upheaval in one’s environment and situation, even such as shattering loss or excruciating pain.

The ancient character Job — a real person — is an example of this in real life. Stripped of family, friends, wealth, and health, he said, rent with grief, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there: the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. . . . Shall we accept good from God, and not adversity? . . . .Though He slay me, yet will I trust in him.”

Job’s “inner resource” was the LORD his God. His relationship with Him was a knowing deeper than mere intellectual assent of a creed, a reality such as could sustain him through the harshest vicissitudes of life.

Would you not like this for yourself and your loved ones? The benefits of opening your heart to the LORD God, and Jesus Christ whom He sent to gather His children to Himself, these benefits extend into eternity, and one of the many is eternal life on a paradise New Earth, after the forgiveness of sins and the new birth as a child of God given a new spirit and heart.

Dear reader, have you any “inner resource” able to sustain you in loss and pain? I think of the people in Lebanon — many of them harmless and peaceable Christians and other civilians — struggling with homelessness, possibly bereaving family members already killed.

It won’t be coming to you who are in the United States or in the U.K., you say? Or in other parts of the Western world that are also less war-torn at the moment? Dependable prophecy says that the entire earth will be ravaged as the end of this age draws near. Can we not see it coming in our own time?

Not just ourselves, but our families and close friends are vulnerable. Let me return to Job for a moment. Later on in the book on his life, he says some remarkable things, being granted — in vision quite beyond his normal, yet still remarkable, faith — to say this:

I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!

There is only one Redeemer, who redeemed Job’s life — and all those other multitudes who trusted in Him — and that is the Messiah-Christ, who redeemed them from the penalty and guilt of their sin, not with silver or gold, but with His own precious blood, paying — by His atoning sacrificial death — what they owed to Justice, that they may have forgiveness of sin and eternal life on Paradise New Earth after the resurrection and judgment.

I know that myself I can not muster up withal to withstand, to endure, the terrors, griefs, and pains this life may bring — as the young and immature apostle Peter proudly thought he would be able to do, and failed terribly — but I must look in dependence on my Lord and Saviour to supply me with the strength of His presence in that moment of need.

Hear His words:

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest . . . and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out . . . And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

Friends, this is not mere “religion”, but reality, for there is a God, and a Heaven and a Hell, and earth is now become a stronghold of demons and those deluded men of theirs who think to usher in a brave new world which will soon enough show itself to be a shocking dystopia of monstrous strength and control.

Why would God allow this? To separate the wheat from the chaff, as Jesus put it. To see that His faithful people are purified in the crucible of affliction, and to reveal those who are His mortal enemies who slaughter His beloved children, or consent to such slaughter.

What do His faithful believers think of this? We trust Him with our very lives, knowing He loves us and is worthy to die for, if need be.

For resurrection changes everything: we who are His go into His presence when we die, and at the great resurrection of all the dead are reunited with our bodies — which have been “glorified” — and shall no more see death or pain in our new earth homes and lives. John the apostle, to whom was given the vision of things to come, writes:

Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”

The Lord Jesus sits on the throne of the kingdom of Heaven with the Father, and receives all those who come to Him for mercy and everlasting life.

The apostle Paul writes,

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.