stress on Privilege

According to a December 2014 article in The Economist, there is a “distinct correlation between privilege and pressure.” We may earn more money, but we can never earn more time. And because we’re work...

In the fall of 2009, I was invited to go on a month-long speaking tour throughout Africa. During the trip, a CEO from South Africa named Salim took me to Soweto, a township just outside of Johannesbur...

When we find worth by our affluence, it promises rest but brings stress, increasing demands, and a greater devotion to a god that will never love us and always forsake us.

A Christian's freedom from anxiety is not due to some guaranteed freedom from trouble, but to the folly of worry and especially to the confidence that God is our Father, that even permitted suffer...

Where there is no choice, we do well to make no difficulty.

We are hyperliving, skimming along on the surface of life.

In the story of grace, the lack of hurry makes room for presence.

We need the interruption of the night To ease attention off when overtight, To break out logic in too long a flight, And ask us if our premises are right.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a best-selling statistician, argues that it is not even mere resilience we need, but what he calls antifragility . He groups things into three categories. First, fragile...

Excessive stress occurs when the demands made on an organism exceed that organism’s reasonable capacities to fill them.

Although we use the word stress in a negative connotation, it actually is a value-neutral concept. In the medical sense, stress is the body’s response to any change required of it or any demand impose...

What you allow to occupy your mind will sooner or later determine your feelings, your speech and your actions. Thoughts . . . have a real impact on how you feel and behave.”

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Philippian Joy During Division and Persecution For an in-depth description of the context of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, see last...

Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.

The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashio...

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

Make a point of watching quality documentaries: a study by the BBC and the University of California, Berkeley, found that viewing nature programmes increased feelings of awe, amusement and joy while r...

In his highly book, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding balance, even as life seems to pull us in different directions: Overextending yourself is stretching your physic...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding ways to rest and relax as part of a healthy, balanced life: I once read a book in which the author sa...

Everyone: Holy God, we live our lives struggling in our own burdens and failing to trust You with all the things that hold us down. Leader: Your Scripture says, "Come to Me all you who are wear...

“Relax, none of us are getting out of here alive.”

Too many Christians are broken in a destructive way—so badly broken that they cannot carry out the great commandment of loving God and neighbor. Their inner turmoil prevents them from carrying out God...

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...

All: Remember your mercy, O LORD, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the...

A study from Yale said the best way to deal with stress is to do a small act of generosity for someone else.

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down. For the needs of today we have corresponding strength given. For the morrow we are told to trust. It is not ours yet. It...

The objects of the present life fill the human eye with a false magnification because of their immediacy.

The truth is that it’s what we say to ourselves [the self-talk of our thought life] in response to any particular situation that mainly determines our mood and feelings.

There is an optimum level of tension which we require in order to perform well. When stress exceeds that level, exhaustion and burnout are the result.

Mess creates stress.