Father–nothing escapes your notice, is beyond your care or too hard for you to take on, whether it concerns nations or individuals. You have a heart for all the world–not just our little piece of it. ...
Population studies indicate that something is going terribly wrong: people ages twenty-four to sixty-five are dying eight to fifteen years younger than previous generations from preventable lifestyle ...
God of nations and Lord of all creation: You were there at the beginning of time and at our beginning, and You will be there at the ending and when we finally come home. There is no time You are not t...
Milton Rokeach wrote a book entitled The Three Christs of Ypsilanti….there were three patients in that hospital, each of whom thought he was Jesus Christ. One was too far gone in his psychotic isolati...
Some years ago I received a letter from a young man I knew slightly. ‘I have just made a great discovery,’ he wrote. ‘Almighty God had two sons. Jesus Christ was the first; I am the second.’ I glanced...
Adjusting for population growth, ten times as many people in the Western nations today suffer from “unipolar” depression, or unremitting bad feelings without a specific cause, than did half a century ...
According to a 2018 CIGNA study, loneliness in America has reached “epidemic” levels. After surveying twenty thousand adults, researchers found that 46 percent felt alone either sometimes or always, 4...
Some of you may remember the film A Beautiful Mind , named after the book with the same title. The book is based on the life of John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, a brilliant mathematician and profe...
God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—You are ever the same in Your grace and truth, Your power and love; Yet, You always challenge us to grow, change and become more like Jesus. We’re not yet what we w...
Lord–bless your people this day. God our Father—in Your love and compassion; Jesus, God the Son–with Your grace and truth; Spirit of God–in Your power and with Your love. Triune God, pour out Your bou...
The Lord calls us to examine the wounds of the Risen One and to see there the depth of his love for us. Let us therefore approach the throne of God in confidence as we pray for the people of God in Ch...
In a study conducted by Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, researchers discovered what most of us already know: people do not like to be left alone with their own tho...
Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 34:18, Ephesians 4:26-27, Proverbs 3:5-6, James 1:2-4
Anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress are all ways of describing natural human responses to adversity and the experiences of life. And we all face adversity in many different ways: challengin...
We thank You, God our Father, for Your grace, mercy and love, expressed today through Your Word and Sacrament; and we ask You to help us to pray and to know what to pray. You give us all good gifts: Y...
Depression is a thief. A pickpocket. Swiping a memory here and there. An emotion, a plan for the afternoon, part of a conversation. It is a burglar. Leaving behind empty surfaces and containers that u...
According to the World Health Organization, one in thirteen globally suffers from anxiety. In the United States, one in five adults have a mental health condition. That’s over forty million Americans;...
There was a time when adults were neatly categorized into one of two groups: you were either neurotic or psychotic. Psychotic meant that you were out of touch with reality and afraid; neurotic meant t...
Matthew 6:34, Proverbs 12:25, Psalm 34:17-18, Philippians 4:6-7, Isaiah 40:29-31
I have often heard anxiety described as a big beach ball that you try to push under the water. Do you remember playing that game as a child? Keep that beach ball under the water as long as you can! Yo...
“Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms”
Micah 5:2, Luke 2:4-7, Matthew 2:16-18, John 1:46, Isaiah 61:3, Matthew 5:1-20, Isaiah 5:20
It is remarkable that a word like ‘Bethlehem’, forever connected to the birth of our savior, could be transformed into a symbol of confusion and chaos. Yet, this is precisely what happened. St. Mary o...
I sense that mental illness resembles a bone fracture. Bones have remarkable durability, but also, once broken, can rapidly heal and be reset. With normal daily use, one might never be aware of past p...
Most alarming is the absence of peace among our youth. Research from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is showing an epidemic of mental health problems among eighteen- to twenty-four-year...
We don’t know what we are doing, and I think this is especially true about the way our society deals with mental health. In just the past fifteen years, I have witnessed a massive shift in how evangel...
Nehemiah 1:1-11, Acts 16:25-34, Mark 4:35-41, Acts 2:1-13, Luke 10:25-37, Matthew 11:28-30, Acts 1:8
Lord–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Thank You that there’s no place we can hide from Your Spirit, no place we can flee from Your presence. We can’t go beyond the reach of Your love, nor out-distance the...
Gracious God, forgive us for when we fail to recognize the destructive power of mental illness. Every day we are surrounded by people with real emotional and mental difficulties that we ignore. We con...
Proverbs 4:23, Luke 6:45, Matthew 12:34-35, Luke 6:45, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Proverbs 17:22
Did you know that more has been discovered about our minds in the last twenty years than in all the time before that? Did you know that an estimated 60 to 80 percent of visits to primary care physicia...
Modern psychological and psychiatric approaches to mental health, particularly the use of drugs like antidepressants and antipsychotics, don’t address the complexity of the human mind. Indeed, they ha...
As many theologians have helpfully described, there is a healthy place for doubting that is integral to faith. When approached thoughtfully and sincerely, these doubts can lead to a deepening understa...