Everybody grinds to get their daily bread, whether it is for themselves or for someone else.
Parents work overtime to be able to fulfil their role as providers. Teenagers accept unfair labour and low wages to afford their desire for sociability and self-determination. Workers pick up more shifts at work and cancel more plans with friends because priorities change. Attendance at church becomes a testing of faith when double wages are offered on weekends and you’re too tired to hear a sermon right now, anyway.
People are so stressed to be able to afford their ‘expensive’ lifestyles that our principles that were present before the stress start to waver. I use the word ‘expensive’ without it being limited to monetary prices but including the cost of our morals, mental and physical wellbeing.
As we get older, we get so consumed by the need to keep up with appearances that our role as faithful believers come second to our role as socially stable individuals.
We stimulate stress through worrying and overthinking our daily day, no longer confiding in God or the people who love us. We try to control every aspect of our life by making plans that are not lead by our faith in God’s guidance, but our mortal understanding of the world that tells us to buy into the beauty standards, trendy apartments and money-driven goals.
We live as though this is all there is to our existence, as if God did not create us for a greater purpose than living as stress infused beings.
Unlike the worldly stress that intend to destabilise us and delude us into being obsessed with our oncoming disappointments, the Lord promises that his plans are not harm us but to proper us (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV).
Because of our fixation with stressing, we forget that the Lord calls us to speak to him and rely on him as a provider that is willing to make our journey on this earth bearable and a shared experience.
When we walk with stress, we walk alone; but when we walk by faith in Christ, we walk with the purpose He has for us. While that purpose and journey is not promised to be of ease and relaxation, it’s promised to be a testament to our mission as Christians and the love God has for his people.
So I encourage you today, to reflect on the stresses that bound you to be continuously stuck mentally and emotionally, and to ask if it is still valid even after God said he would take care of it.
AUTHOR: Raviana Sailo