There are more than enough reasons to feel stress in life. We may share in a host of larger concerns about climate, wars, loss of human life, political dysfunction. We may be dealing with personal concerns. Or we may feel a compounding effect of all of it that can be overwhelming. It is important that we have a way to deal with stress.
We may need to increase our capacity to function with greater stress. This may include more sleep, meditation, exercise, friendships, and perhaps professional help.
There are also unhelpful and unhealthy options.
We may deal with stress by looking for diversions. But diversions only buy a little time.
We may try to diminish the stress we feel. But addictions of different sorts ultimately and invariably lead to more problems, not fewer. Killing time isn’t a helpful answer.
We may try denial. But while living in an alternate reality may provide a sort of relief, checking out separates us from others and from making a difference. And reality keeps showing up.
The Lord’s Prayer, which begins with three petitions about seeking alignment with God, also offers in them a path to dealing with something as concrete as stress.
Jesus said, “Be not anxious.”
It is a good word, because anxiety drains energy without producing any positive impact. However, he didn’t follow it up with a list of strategies. Instead, he pointed to birds and flowers that don’t worry much (or at all). In that shift, Jesus suggested our perspective is critical in dealing with pressure.
Perspective is also where the Lord’s prayer begins,
that is, a perspective that affirms Holiness, even in the midst of the chaos we may feel or experience. It is to a larger perspective, a perspective that makes space for God to which the prayer calls us.
That perspective invites us also to an expanded hope, the subject of the second petition of the Lord’s prayer, a hope for the whole earth to become what God intends. It is precisely because this hope for the Kingdom is beyond us but also for us that Jesus healed the sick, taught the value of those who were discounted, and modeled forgiveness. He offered a reason for hope and gave witness to it. A Kingdom hope is hope for the triumph of love on earth as in heaven.
The third petition of the Lord’s prayer, the third of three alignments, is about trusting God.
If there is a larger frame for us to live from, a greater hope before us, and God cares about our well-being more than we can care about ourselves, then there is a freedom and a privilege to invest our life and use our life for good. What Jesus taught doesn’t disengage us from life or reality, it makes living well here our calling. We will still face stresses. And we will be tempted to live small, lose hope and trust no one. But Jesus gave us a path to a bigger life, where health and life is found.
