ecclesiastes on Stress Management

A common question I’m hearing from folks these days is whether it is beneficial (or a moral imperative) to pay attention to the news. The Catholic nun and social activist Dorothy Day asked the same qu...

Crises, and pressures for change, confront individuals and their groups at all levels, ranging from single people, to teams, to businesses, to nations, to the whole world. Crises may arise from extern...

We delude ourselves into believing that if we can just get everything done, if we can only tie up all the loose ends, if we can even once get ahead of the crush, we will prove our worth and establish ...

People in a hurry never have time for recovery. Their minds have little time to meditate and pray so that problems can be put in perspective. In short, people in our age are showing signs of physiolog...

Everydayness is my problem. It’s easy to think about what you would do in wartime, or if a hurricane blows through, or if you spent a month in Paris, or if your guy wins the election, or if you won th...

In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.

After surveying an incredibly diverse cross section of college students across America, Donna Freitas found “the most pressing social media issues students face: the importance of appearing happy”—and...

The Messy Middle In his classic work Transitions, author and professor William Bridges shares an excellent anecdote about life in crisis: it can happen at any time and in a myriad of ways. It also de...

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

When we speak of being the steward of our life, something else must be stressed. We are called to be the steward not of some ideal life or even the life we wish we had; rather we are called to be stew...

As I have worked to clarify my calling, I have learned to pay attention to my energy levels in response to different activities. If I experience a particular activity as being inordinately draining, I...

The Puritan preacher Cotton Mather, hard at work over the business of ministry, prayer, and writing, wrote over his study door in large letters, “BE SHORT.” Today, he might well have written "MAK...

...work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental...

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

I saw a live podcast a few weeks ago, and the host, actor Dax Shepherd, gave the audience a couple minutes to ask questions. One young woman in the front row asked him, “How do you get through the har...

Have you ever heard of "Stein’s Law"? Named after University of Virginia economics professor Herbert Stein, it states: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Do you...

The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day.

In 1963, the politician, ambassador, and one-time presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson addressed the students of Princeton University with a touch of humor. “I understand I am here to speak, and ...

It isn't the changes that do you in, it's the transitions. Change is not the same as transition. Change is situational: the new site, the new boss, the new team roles, the new policy. Transiti...

Frank Buchman, an American Lutheran who founded the First Century Christian Fellowship in 1921, later renamed the Oxford Group in 1928, was known for his belief in divine guidance. One evening, Presid...

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

In a commencement speech at Rice University around the turn of the century (the 21st century to be precise) the author Kurt Vonnegut shared some of the wisdom of his life. He went on to share a story ...

Everything in our society seems to convey the message of “now!” It’s almost as if we’ve entered an era where we have sacrificed the processing of knowledge for the gathering of data.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to break down, and...

In his book, Soul Keeping, pastor John Ortberg describes his mentorship by Dallas Willard early in his ministry. The following vignette occurred while Willard was teaching a philosphy course at the Un...

Why is change important? Why do we avoid it, even when it means experiencing much more pain staying stuck? Writer Ann Lammott explains: If we stay where we are, where we’re stuck, where we’re comfort...

Thank you, Lord, for this season of sun and slow motion, of games and porch sitting, of picnics and light green fireflies on heavy purple evenings; and praise for slight breezes. It’s good, God...

Ann was a working mother in her 30’s, and one of the millions of women who saw the marshmallow castle on the December cover of a popular women’s magazine. Ann confessed, later, that she felt like a “b...