Overwhelmed!

 

Friday, June 24, 2022

I cry out to God; yes, I shout.  Oh, that God would listen to me!  When I was in deep trouble, I searched for the Lord.  All night long I prayed, with hands lifted toward heaven, but my soul was not comforted.  I think of God, and I moan, overwhelmed with longing for his help.               Interlude

You don’t let me sleep.  I am too distressed even to pray!  I think of the good old days, long since ended, when my nights were filled with joyful songs.  I search my soul and ponder the difference now.  Has the Lord rejected me forever?  Will he never again be kind to me?  Is his unfailing love gone forever?  Have his promises permanently failed?  Has God forgotten to be gracious?  Has he slammed the door on his compassion?            Interlude

And I said, “This is my fate; the Most High has turned his hand against me.”  But then I recall all you have done, O Lord; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago.  They are constantly in my thoughts.  I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works.  O God, your ways are holy.  Is there any god as mighty as you?  You are the God of great wonders!  You demonstrate your awesome power among the nations.  By your strong arm, you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.   Psalm 77:1-15

It's a very common experience; all too common!  The pressure builds on the job, or in the family, or with neighbors, death, Covid, bills, age…and on into the abyss.  You’ve been overwhelmed; hope has vanished.  Even just listing these gives me a cold chill.  I’ve been there; chances are you have too, or you even live there.

Whether you’re a believer in God, follower of Jesus, or someone who’s not quite sure if God is even there, you’ve probably prayed during those times.  You ask for a solution, or at least some relief, and the heavens respond back quickly with….NOTHING.  There’s no sound, no skies unfolding with answers, not a twinge of assurance suddenly welling-up in your gut; just the emptiness and certainty that you’re on your own, in your pain, and completely forgotten.

The Psalmist, a court musician in King David’s reign, spent a night in prayer over what was happening in his life, and a kingdom in chaos.  Heaven went dark on him.  You can just picture the building sense of Why Bother?  If you’ve watched that develop in a friend, or family member, you know it’s time to collect all the loose prescription bottles around the house and change the combination on the gun safe.  The scenes start playing over and again in your mind of how you can escape such pain.  If you’ve faced this, and lived-through to a revival of hope, you know it was something greater than what was left inside of you that saved you from yourself.  There was a moment when it all changed, or it gradually dawned in your soul, that a genuinely-hopeful light did exist at the end of the darkness.

For Asaph, it was a long history of staying close to God’s family, prayer, and choosing faith over feelings.  He began to recall (out loud in his written prayer) all the historical facts of God’s goodness.  He started listing them, one-by-one, and with each post of God’s unending faithfulness, the light of dawn crept a little closer.  This practiced litany of Israel’s history with God’s lovingkindness became a sermon Asaph penned for other depressed, hopeless ones in Israel.  By the time this court poet was done, his own darkness was glowing with surprising and fierce joy; the next Psalm ends with God’s solidified tenderness and hope:

He cared for them with a true heart and led them with skillful hands.  Psalm 78:72

For You Today

Is your hope tank on empty?  Take Asaph’s lesson; joy comes in the mourning!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author) 

For other posts on this topic:  A Prayer From the Hourglass and Has God Forgotten to Be Gracious?

[1] 6 Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

 

Overwhelmed

 

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

I cry out to the Lord; I plead for the Lord’s mercy.  I pour out my complaints before him and tell him all my troubles.  When I am overwhelmed, you alone know the way I should turn.  Wherever I go, my enemies have set traps for me.  I look for someone to come and help me, but no one gives me a passing thought!  No one will help me; no one cares a bit what happens to me.  Then I pray to you, O Lord.  I say, “You are my place of refuge.  You are all I really want in life.  Psalm 142:1-5

In preparing for celebrating the Lord’s Supper with a group of other preachers I realized I was a bit consumed by commitments.  My schedule looks like a crazed chicken with print cartridges for feet had been turned loose to run all over my calendar!  Here I was, contemplating what it would take to be a non-anxious presence as the celebrant, realizing (in that honest look-in-the-mirror moment), that I was probably the most-anxious guy who would sit at that table.   

It’s a common state of affairs these days; there’s just not enough time for everything you planned, much less what everybody else in your world wants.  As the Psalmist, it’s no trouble at all to make the leap from well, I’m a little busier than I’d like to be…all the way to stop this crazy merry-go-round, I need to get off before I explode!

The key word in that compound thought is OVERWHELMED! 

If you can honestly say you’ve never felt overwhelmed, you’re either quite disconnected from everyone and everything, and might consider checking with a psychotherapist for some new meds…or you’re not really being honest.  Anxiety, fear, concern, frazzled…there are so many ways to describe that sense in the pit of your stomach that alerts you to the fact that you can’t possibly complete all that life has dumped on your plate!

Then I read today’s Psalm again.  A Psalm generally appears 3 times each week in the Lectionary Readings, and I’m certain the Lord (knowing how dense I can be) ordained it that way.  Sometimes it takes much rain to soak a dry mind!  It finally sunk-in; the Psalmist knew how to sing woe, despair, and agony on me as well as anyone; in short – he is me!

And look what I discovered – the Psalmist opens up that part of my innermost being and lays it out for the sun to get at it – to chase the darkness and fear, to cull the briars from where I’m walking barefoot.  He opens the prayer book of my heart and the notes resonate deep-within how God, as my refuge from all the tormenting angst of the day’s demands, is all my heart really wanted anyway. 

And there is a reason for that.  Created in the image of God, even a sin-stained life can recognize the light that still lingers there, waiting to be set on the hills of our heart and soul.  It illuminates all the goodness of the hand of God from which we’ve sprung.  And it draws us to Him.  And that is enough to turn the anxiety of all the shortcomings I feel into nothing but gratitude for God’s grace.  If there is any place in this universe where Russell doesn’t come up short, it’s when he is bathed in the forgiveness of God’s loving embrace.

That’s a different kind of being overwhelmed; beloved, I’ll take that over what the world wants to give me…any day!

For You Today

If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by the workload, crises, world news, or what to do about your child’s failing grades in school….or maybe just the whole lot of what you’ve been dealing-with…take an extra moment with Psalm 142 today.  Nothing that’s been chasing you will stand a chance at robbing the peace you’ll find there.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!   

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©    

I Think I'm Having Stress

[1]

Friday, November 2, 2018

Praise the Lord!  Let all that I am praise the Lord.  I will praise the Lord as long as I live.  I will sing praises to my God with my dying breath.  Don’t put your confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there.  When they breathe their last, they return to the earth, and all their plans die with them.  But joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper, whose hope is in the Lord their God.  He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them.  He keeps every promise forever.  He gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry.  The Lord frees the prisoners.  The Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord lifts up those who are weighed down.  The Lord loves the godly.  The Lord protects the foreigners among us.  He cares for the orphans and widows, but he frustrates the plans of the wicked.  The Lord will reign forever.  He will be your God, O Jerusalem, throughout the generations.  Praise the Lord!  Psalm 146:1-10(NLT)

A lady called a mother friend of hers to ask how she was getting along.  Said the voice on the other end of the phone:  I'm sick, the house is a mess, and the kids are making me crazy."  

Said the friend:  Don't move a muscle, I'll be right over; I'll cook and clean for you and keep your kids out of your hair until your husband, Sam gets home.   

Said the harried mother, Sam?  My husband's name isn't Sam!  

Said the other, Oh, I'm sorry.  I must have dialed the wrong number. 

After a brief pause the tired Mom said:  That's O.K., but.... you’re still coming over, aren't you?[2]

People find themselves under the effects of a load of stress these days.  Of course, it is no new thing; Adam and Eve had a pile of it to deal with, and then their younger son was murdered by his own brother.  Most stress is produced by breakdowns in relationship; mini-disagreements or maxi, as in the case of Cain and Abel.  But all conflict between humans produces tension and the threat of being overwhelmed. 

We look in all sorts of directions for help, personal coping mechanisms, friends, neighbors, programs that promise help or resources.  There are self-help books, retreats, gurus and, the prize-winner in all the competition to ease your troubled mind: dropping-out.  The opting-out of tension dimension is filled with more choices:  TV, adulterous affairs, drugs that numb your ability to feel, and too many more to list.

I have heard the concept that tension can be good or bad.  Eustress is the good kind; like the tension on the strings of a violin, tightened just enough to be in perfect tune.  This is like the push-and-pull of a healthy relationship between co-workers who respect each other’s contribution to a project.  But, if the roles, established authority patterns, or lines of communication get confused, or just plain shattered, like a violin string pulled too tightly --- SNAP!

Our Psalmist was no stranger to stress; he knew the effects of being weighed down like an overburdened pack animal.  He knew the prison of empty promises and false friendships.  He understood the loneliness of being a powerless outsider without hope.  And so, this man said goodbye to counting on the powerful of this earth to bring him any relief; he turned his heart Heavenward.  And, there he found hope, joy, and the lift of a friend.

I’m not dissing the whole human race here; we need to learn and practice knowing, understanding, and helping each other; that’s a godly thing!  But, my whole point is to give trust slowly and carefully.  If we entrust ourselves to anyone else’s leading, just because they sound good when they talk, we will soon find that trust violated (and maybe our pocket picked!).

Rather, trust freely and quickly in the Lord; never a promise broken there!

For You Today

How’s it going in that stress department?  Are your stripes unravelling?  Here’s a gentle reminder where to turn:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.
Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.  Proverbs 3:5-6(NLT)

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

Go to VIDEO

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of John Wilcock's the column of lasting insignificance 2-8-14

[2] Stressed Mom image, Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Future Shock

Friday – October 4, 2013

Ever felt overwhelmed by the pace of today’s culture?

In 1970 a book written by Alvin Tofler was entitled “Future Shock”.  Tofler traced the major shifts in mankind’s journey as being:

·        Shift ONE - about 10,000 years ago - from hunter/gatherer to agrarian (farmer).  Social structure changed from roaming barbarians to clustered family/town units.

·        Shift TWO - about 250 years ago – from farmers to industrial-oriented makers of things.

·        Shift THREE - within the last 60 years – from industrial to information – where less than 15% of the population is involved in physically making things; technology (information) produces more wealth than industry. (source:  http://www.cesar.ws/index.php/267/ )

“Future Shock” is the term used by Tofler to help us recognize the paralyzing effects of change or information-overload, as robotically-controlled manufacturing, computer-driven culture places more information at our disposal, and less critical human input as our fate. 

It’s where the computer brain is more important than the human brain.

A companion shift to all of this is an increasing sense of self-sufficiency.  When you can create wealth, health and stuff with a mouse click or two, where is the need for God?

Ordinarily the church is several decades behind culture, resisting the shifts.  However, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the effects of culture shifts even in the church.  Consider, right now, this pastor is communicating not from a pulpit, but sermonizing on a Gateway computer, hooked-up to Time Warner’s broadband connection.  A small group of people in the USA and Philippines are reading together.

So…where does that leave us?

It leaves us where Noah found himself. 

In the midst of a generation that felt no need for God, Noah knew that God was truly the earth’s only hope. 

So, to state the obvious, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. 

In the midst of this post-industrial, achievement of Almighty MAN generation…it is still the fear of God which will place you outside of technology’s mainstream and inside God’s smelly ARK.

And it’s still a choice:  Future Shock or Flood Scenario.

Today

Gain a little perspective.  Step back from this computer screen which may have become your “lifeline” to the outside world, and reconnect with the God who knows every hair on your head.

This Sunday is World Communion Sunday.  All over the globe Christians will unite around a table that shares the body and blood of the New Covenant.  You won’t need an iPhone or a Twitter account.  There is no request for your Email address or phone contact.  It’s a simple mystery – our sin against Him and His love for us. 

There’s your “Future Shock”.