Scales

I see scales, sometimes hung as a necklace -- heavy and binding, hemming and secure. Their weight is of consequence but despite their own function, their substance is incalculable. These weights, with their cups and their arms hang right above me, and pronounce either a sagging grace or an embattled truth.

We are told: "Do not let kindness and truth leave you; bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart." (Proverbs 3:3) And thus the scales are weighed. I imagine this life as a series of tracks upon which I walk, bridling my steps in moving aright; the reins of my soul being tugged, tightened or lost by the fingers of grace within. The grasp is kept beyond me, while the principle is ingested within. The life of the Spirit in me totters and tilts as I struggle to apply and maintain in equal parts these two seemingly paradoxical themes.

In the pictured scales rests a small blaze and a green leaf. I see life and death and the power of my tongue. I see a forest I can catch with one flash of hard-struck truth, an injustice I pass over as I am on holiday with grace -- or the weeping wound that might be cured with one collective cordial of equal parts both.

I see equilibrium in these scales, and the kindness of a God who grants stability. I see a remedy to the ailments I inflict, and a constant gauge about and within that strikes down, builds up or restrains all that restricts clear passage on this narrow way. These scales contain inexhaustible reserve of grace; one scale tips and the healing tonic of the other drips and fills until they hang there side by side.