Light and darkness.
Health and sickness.
Good and evil.
Pleasure and pain.
These opposites are often viewed as simply positive and negative, but God sees a grander purpose for opposites than we sometimes do.
Opposites provide choice and allow us to use our agency.
Opposites also provide balance. Opposites provide balance to the universe, to nature, and even to our very happiness and ability to progress.
Consider these opposites:
Day and night.
Work and play.
Connection and disconnection.
Silence and noise.
Feasting and fasting.
Summer and winter.
On and off.
Wet and dry.
Hot and cold.
Moving and resting.
Masculine and feminine.
Yin and yang.
There is a balance that comes from opposites.
God knows this balance is necessary, so He built it into the universe. We have night and we have day.
He built it into the seasons. Spring, summer, fall, and winter. There’s a time of planting and harvest and there’s a time of dormancy and rest.
He built it into our bodies. There is a time for being awake and a time to sleep. There’s a time to work and there’s a time to rest.
When we try to act against these opposites, we fail miserably.
The opposites are there to provide balance, and if we disregard them we create chaos instead of order.
God has laid these opposites as a foundation to give balance to life. If we are wise, we can learn how to intentionally use opposites to bring order and balance to our life as well.
Perhaps one reason the forced slowness of the pandemic was such an unexpected welcome for some was because it created an opposite. Our fast paced life was suddenly slowed. And vice versa, perhaps the reason we can now be over and done with this idea of slowness, is because we need the balance of an opposite yet again.
