A Perspective on Stress

I am stressed out. I stay stressed out, about work or about my kids or about my husband's health or about my weight or about my work (wait, I already said work...but it actually does deserve double mention for the amount of energy I spend stressing out about it.)

I just stay stressed out...which then turns into maudlin self-pity, irritability, victim-thinking and general unpleasantness.

During this Lenten season, I've spent an unprecedented amount of time in worship and study. (Not that it's been all that remarkable, but it's more than I've ever done before.)

In the car this morning, I was running through my schedule today and looking forward to tonight's Maundy Thursday service at church. And then I got to thinking about the significance of observing Maundy Thursday.

We know from Scripture that 1,978 years ago, after sharing what was to become known as The Last Supper, Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane tonight, on his face and asking his Father if there was some other way to pull off the salvation thing. The Bible says that he was literally sweating blood as a physical manifestation of his emotional state.

What the Bible doesn't tell us is how he felt in the hours leading up to the Last Supper - the anxiety of trying to explain to his disciples the coming 72 hours, the gut sickness that must have accompanied the certainty of impending and unimaginable physical pain...and the knowledge that the very people he was dying to save were going to spit and make fun of him.

Now THAT'S what I call stress.