Face up to stress
When today’s contributor, feeling overwhelmed, reached out to God for answers, she found that divine Love is able to lift even the heaviest sense of stress and sadness.
When we were younger, my sisters and I played a game, building a tower out of playing cards. Carefully we added cards to the stack, until it was one card too many – and the whole pile came tumbling down. Life may feel equally precarious at times!
Is it possible to withstand the stresses associated with daily life? A clue may be found in a comparison Jesus made between two men who built houses on very different foundations. One man built on rock, the other on sand. When storms battered the houses, the one built on sand collapsed, while the one built on the rock-solid foundation remained intact.
There was a time when many things that are often considered major causes of stress all seemed to come at me at once – a move to a new house, tough finances, relationship issues, loneliness, and sorrow over the death of someone dear.
I tumbled into a deep depression, but having always turned to God during times of difficulty, I reached out to Him, through floods of tears. I longed to hear some answer.
In the midst of my distress the answer came to me in words from a hymn in the 1932 “Christian Science Hymnal”: “Hear His voice above the tempest: I have not forsaken thee” (Johannes Heermann, No. 76).
I felt a quiet calm wash over me, and feelings of peace replaced strain and stress. I was not forsaken! I began focusing on my inseparability from God, divine Love, who made each of us as the spiritual expression of His endless love – and here’s what happened. It wasn’t always easy, but the move went smoothly, my financial burdens eased, and loneliness disappeared. My sense of family and friends expanded, and the grief I was feeling began to lift as I learned more of my and everyone’s eternal relation to God.
It’s so encouraging to know that divine Love is able to penetrate and remove even the deepest sorrow. Praying to better know God as being in complete control of His all-good and eternal universe allows us to pass through trials spiritually strengthened. We may face many storms in life, but divine Love is not a pack of cards. Letting God’s love in helps us become more deeply rooted and established on an endlessly solid, spiritual foundation.
Other versions of this article appeared on the Dec. 5, 2018, Christian Science Daily Lift podcast and on spirituality.com on April 6, 2010.