Have you ever tried to trim a beard? Have you?I once stood in front a mirror trying to get the thing absolutely symmetrically perfect. I'd cut a little off this side, and then I'd notice it looked out of balance. So, I'd cut a bit on the other side to even it up. But then it would look out of balance in the other direction. That's the way it went until there wasn't enough of the beard left and so I just cut the whole thing off.For years I went without one. Felt good, but my wife wanted me to grow a goatee. So I did. It's loaded with grey, and playing with it has become my new nervous pastime.I was sitting in session with a client the other day and he says, “So, how long are you going to grow your beard?”Ah-oh. Suddenly my beard is the focus of therapy? Time to trim the beard. So, I got out a pair of scissors and turned the lights on by the mirror. I combed out the beard and started cutting. It began to take shape, and I thought it looked OK until I put my glasses back on.Okay, stop laughing. Sure enough, it was out of balance. However, not by much. I'm thinking of just letting it alone this way. Will people notice? It could become a game to watch them and see if they are sizing up and assessing the balance. Maybe this way I'll be able to evaluate all the obsessive-compulsive folks, because it will drive them crazy if it's not perfect. They'll be tilting their heads and squinting their eyes, and that's when I'll say, “What's wrong?”And they'll say, “Nothing. Nothing.”Then I'll smile and ask, “Were you looking at my beard?”Okay, so maybe I'll get the scissors out and make it right. Just to achieve balance, because if truth be told, I can't stand it myself!Balance. Isn't that hard to achieve?The ability to keep our bodies from falling over is called equilibrioception (or balance). If you drink too much, your balance is off. If you have brain malfunction, your balance is off. If you have an inner ear virus, you'll lose your balance, and feel dizzy.The ability to keep a tyre from wobbling off-centre when it rotates depends on balance. If one of your tyres is out of balance and your reach a certain speed, it sends a shimmy through the whole vehicle.According to Wikipedia, a balanced line or balanced signal pair is a transmission line consisting of two conductors of the same type, each of which has equal impedances along their lengths and equal impedances to ground and to other circuits. Now I did not understand a word of that, but I am assured it had something to do with balance.What is the right mix of diet and exercise that maintains a good weight given a person's metabolic rate? What is the right balance between kindness and firmness? When you are a parent and you have to discipline your child, what is the right balance of punishment and affection?And that brings me to balance in the person of God the incredible way that God shows Himself to be both just and the justifier. Jesus satisfied the law, and He told people that not the smallest letter, nor even the smallest part of a letter of the law would fade before His kingdom was established. God stood by His standards, and those standards demanded perfection. He is just. But Jesus was also the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, so He died in our place in order that He might be the justifier.If this whole drama had been played out at school, and God were the demanding teacher, then He would have written the term paper that had to be perfect and turned it in to himself for everyone in his class.God shows great balance between what He expects from people and what He provides to people because they cannot measure up. I wish we each had that kind of balance.If we did, then my bet is that I would not be seeing even half of the people that I do for relationship problems. Instead, they would be standing their ground and holding to their boundaries, but they would also be forgiving and, with wisdom, dispensing grace undeserved favour. Understand, I'm not advocating holding your hand out to a venomous snake; however, I am in favour of making room for a person to change. And change they often do when they've experienced forgiveness and undeserved favour.Unless we are willing to throw away every person who fails to meet some kind of standard, some expectation, then we must have a rationale for how to forgive and how to move on. Sometimes it's necessary to forgive without reconciliation, but at other times there is a reason to reconcile. Life would become quite lonely if we could not forgive as a basis for reconciliation.To forgive means to let go of the need to get even, to balance the scales of justice. We can hold to the standard; we do not need to condone if we let go of the need to get even or for justice to prevail. However, and just like in the case of Jesus, the offence needs to be absorbed by someone. Jesus gave His life, absorbing the need for justice in respect to every little way in which we fail to measure up to God's standard.If we are to forgive, we must find the balance with people who let us down by absorbing the loss of their offences against us. That will require grieving what it costs us to do that. It broke Christ's heart; it often feels like a heart is breaking to let go with people who have offended us, disappointed us, or neglected and abused us. We cannot save all of humankind for all time, once for all, but we can find an interpersonal balance with the few people given to us at a time.