STRESS I

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I Am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
-Matthew 11:29

When was the last time you took an aspirin? When was the last time you took an hour just for yourself? Chances are, you could recall having taken a pain reliever in the past week but couldn’t remember when you took a quiet walk on the beach. Your tension-headache though, didn’t mean you had a brain tumor. It signaled stress as your nervous system screamed: “I’m overloaded; I just can’t handle this!”

Dr.Hans Seyle has been conducting research on stress since 1936. He has written more than 33 books and over 1600 articles on stress. He doesn’t really believe that people are under more stress today than in previous generations, but he would say that we’re not handling it as well.

Not all stress is bad. But too much stress causes a bridge to collapse, and the violin string to break, and a drumhead to burst.

A young woman climbing the corporate ladder heard me say on my program: “When you repress your emotions, your stomach keeps score.” She wrote, “It was your voice, followed in a brief minute by you praying for strength for those struggling with this problem. To which I replied, ‘Praise the Lord’ and cried. Yesterday I was told by my physician that it is possible I have an ulcer. This sets hard with me as in my opinion, ulcers and Christians should not go together. I equate this with a lack of dependence on God.”

Should you feel as she does, ponder this for a minute. Consider an ordinary table. You stand up on the table, and it holds your weight. Then another person joins you on the table. It wobbles but holds you. A third joins the two of you, and now the legs are wobbling. When that table crashes, was it because the table was not spiritual? Spirituality isn’t the issue. But stress beyond the load limit is.