Overwhelm

Monday, July 26, 2010

Living in overwhelm can mean having too much to do and not enough time to do it. Or it can mean having limited time and energy to get tasks done. Or it could mean living with the fear that you’re not capable of getting a job done. Overwhelm has emotional overtones of stress and anxiety, and it exhibits itself physically, as well. Chronic overwhelm is one of the major causes of anxiety and anxiety disorders. When you’re overwhelmed, your mind overloads with all that’s going on. When you’re overwhelmed, you feel as if you’re carrying a heavy load, a burden. Carrying around this weight takes a toll on your nervous, immune and hormonal systems, and left unattended, likely will produce cycles of anxiety, fatigue and temporary despair. People on this kind of overload are more susceptible to disease and they age faster. What can you do about overload?

My guilt overwhelms me— it is a burden too heavy to bear. Psalm 38:4

An ancient Greek myth holds that Zeus punished the Titans for waging war against him. As the leader of the Titans, Atlas received a harsh punishment. He was forced to hold up an extraordinarily heavy weight. The proverbial version has him holding the weight of the world on his shoulders. When we become overstressed and overwhelmed, we often feel we’re holding the weight of the world on our shoulders. Each year when I go to New York City, I walk past the GE Building and see a huge statue of Atlas, straining under the weight of the world. Then I walk across the street and down the block to enter St. Patrick’s Cathedral. There I see the beautiful Pieta statue, a work of art that depicts the body of Jesus on the lap of his mother Mary after the Crucifixion. I am reminded that when he died on the cross, Jesus took the weight of this world’s sin and sorrow off our shoulders and put it on His shoulders.

Are you letting him carry your weight?

Give your burdens to the LORD, and he will take care of you. He will not permit the Godly to slip and fall. Psalm 55:2

Burdens

Sunday, March 21, 2010

After a tortuous beating and humiliating mocking, the Roman soldiers led Jesus to his crucifixion. Jesus must have been physically exhausted as he set out for Calvary on that Friday morning. John tells us that Jesus carried his own cross, probably the horizontal beam which may have weighed as much as 100 pounds. The other Gospel accounts tell us that at a certain point during the one third mile trip Simon of Cyrene was forced by the Roman soldiers to carry the cross. We know very little about Simon. Was he in Jerusalem to observe Passover? Was he a bystander who knew Jesus? Was he a sympathetic Jew? Was he even a Jew? We just don’t know much about him, yet we know he was an ordinary man pressed into act of service. Instead of being an observant bystander, Simon of Cyrene came to be known for carrying Jesus’ burden. Instead of watching at a safe distance, Simon was forced into action. Simon stepped into the road. He took up the cross and followed Jesus. What a moving and powerful image! And what an example for us!

Galatians 6:2 instructs: “Bear one another's burdens.” Simon was bearing Jesus’ burden when he took up the cross. Mother Theresa had this same passion for carrying the burdens of others. Known as the “Saint of the Gutters” and living with the poorest of the poor, she saw Jesus in everyone she met. She wanted to lift their burdens and said, “Serve and love one person at a time. God does not want us to love crowds of people; that is an impossibility. He wants us to love Him in every single person we meet, when we meet that person.”

How many opportunities do we have to go from bystander to suffering servant? How many times do we try to hide in the crowd instead of stepping out in service like Simon? How often do we love Jesus “in every single person we meet” like Mother Theresa? How often do we share in another’s burdens?

Who in your world is burdened today? What is an act of sacrifice you can perform?