Swallowed by Stress?
Psalm 62: 5 - 12; Jonah 3: 1 – 5, 10
Stress—it’s everywhere in our lives now. First
and second graders worry about homework, high school students with 4.0
averages find themselves rejected by colleges who want “something
more,” workers are taking on additional workloads and
responsibilities as their businesses cut back on staffing trying to
stay profitable and competitive. “With mass layoffs, pay cuts,
seemingly endless workdays and disappearing vacations, Americans are
coping with an enormous amount of job stress,” commented Jane Weaver,
in an MSNBC report. I entered the phrase “job stress” in Google,
and had over 37 ½ million hits.
Stress and burnout take a tremendous toll on
individuals—physical ailments that are stress related include
hypertension, cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, headaches,
depression, insomnia and psychological breakdowns—violent behavior
commonly known as “going postal.” Twenty-five percent of American
workers say their jobs are the number one stress factor in their
lives—and forty percent say their jobs are very or extremely
stressful. Seventy percent admit that they don’t have a healthy
balance between their work and their personal lives. And the
lines between work and home are becoming ever more blurred, as people
increasingly use their cell phones and computers to “stay in touch with
the office” 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With no “down
time,” people are losing touch with any image of themselves beyond
their job. They are at risk for “death from overwork”—something
the Japanese call “karoshi.” The Japanese government reports they
have about 10,000 cases a year of managers, executives and engineers
who have died from overwork. Work-related stress definitely can
be hazardous to your health!
Of course, some jobs are worse than others.
There’s a TV series that features those jobs that are the most
dangerous. I remember watching a part of one show about those
trawlers that go after crab—how often the fishermen were injured, and
how rarely they made that big catch that would ensure them a season’s
income. Lumberjacks, airplane pilots and engineers, farmers and
agricultural workers, trash haulers, the construction workers that
build skyscrapers, even taxi cab drivers all face fatality rates that
are many times greater than found in most jobs. I’d like to add
another to the top 10 list of dangerous, stressful jobs—prophet.
There is no doubt that being a prophet often gets you killed for your
efforts—just remember Archbishop Oscar Romero assasinated in 1980,
Martin Luther King Jr, assassinated in 1968, or Mahatma Ghandi,
assassinated on January 30th, 1948.
Or remember the Biblical prophets, including
Jonah. He knew how stressful and difficult it could be to speak
for God to the people, and he was far from enthusiastic when God told
Jonah, “Here is your mission: “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city,
and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”
(1:2). He was being sent to the capital of Assyria, a powerful
enemy of Israel, and asked to preach against it. Like, who here would
volunteer today to fly to Damascus or Baghdad to walk the streets and
call Muslim extremists to repent of their sins? No volunteers?
Jonah bolts in the opposite direction, taking off
for Tarshish in an effort to escape the presence of the Lord. He hops
on a boat, encounters a storm, is thrown overboard, and is swallowed by
the famous fish. Finally he is spewed out on dry land, and the word of
the Lord comes to him again: “I TOLD you, get up, go to Nineveh, that
great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you” (3:2).
This time Jonah goes to Nineveh. “Forty days more,
and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” he shouts like a madman (3:4). This
prophet cries out against the residents of an enormous and powerful
city, not knowing if they will hear him and heed him ... or just tear
him to pieces.
To everyone’s amazement, the Ninevites believe in
God, and repent of their sins. They proclaim a fast and put on
sackcloth, young and old alike. Even the king of Nineveh rises from his
throne, removes his robe, covers himself in sackcloth, and sits in the
dirt.
When God sees their repentance, they don’t die; they
live! That surprised Jonah no end. And, perversely, angered him.
You see, he was SURE he knew all about God, and what God should do to
those Ninevites. They should be PUNISHED! They should be
wiped off the face of the earth! When God doesn’t do what Jonah
expects, he’s confused and frustrated—and his stress level went UP
rather than down. He rails at God, “I KNEW this would
happen—That’s why I ran off to Tarshish. I just knew you were a
gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast
love, and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment
into a program of forgiveness! So, God, if you won’t kill them, kill
me, for it is better for me to die than to live!”
Can anyone say “drama king?”
Jonah still hasn’t learned what he needs to
learn—that obedience to God means doing what God wants, even if that
isn’t what YOU want, and even if that doesn’t result in what YOU
expect. Letting go of the results is as much a part of obedience
as taking the action God requires. Jonah may run away, he may
reluctantly and grudgingly obey God, he may complain against God’s
mercy—but God has the last word:
“Jonah, what do you have to be angry and stressed
out about?” Jonah turns his back, takes off and sulks under a
shelter of branches. God causes a tree to grow overnight to shade
Jonah, and then sends a worm to cause it to wither and die. Jonah
is ready to faint from the heat. “He prayed to die: “I’m
better off dead!” God said to Jonah, “What right do you have to
get angry about this shade tree?” Jonah sullenly responds,
“Plenty of right. It’s made me angry enough to die.” Then
God said, “What’s this? How is it that you can change your
feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that
you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it.
It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can't I
likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this
big city of more than a hundred and twenty thousand childlike people
who don’t yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent
animals?” (Jonah 3 & 4: selected verses in “The Message”)
So what’s a person to do? How ARE we to be
obedient to God, and will that ADD to our stress levels or reduce
them?
There is a message for us in this story of Jonah,
but it has nothing to do with how dangerous or stressful our work-world
occupations may be, but instead with what true service of our God can
be like. Like Jonah, we will find such service stressful and
frustrating if we have pre-conceived notions about how God is supposed
to function and operate within our own world. If we think we’re
volunteering to serve God but do so with our own agenda, job
description, outcome statements in hand — we’re setting ourselves up
for a whole lot of stress and frustration.
The message of the story of Jonah is all about
hearing the word of God and obeying it. When we’re obedient to God —
even after a time of running in the opposite direction, as Jonah did —
we find that our efforts result in abundant life, not death. Regardless
of what career path we are pursuing, obedience to God can open up new
possibilities for renewal and regeneration—and a reduction in our
stress level.
New life comes from obeying God. Jonah
willfully disobeyed God, and this led to the near-death experience of
being thrown into the sea and swallowed by a fish. But when he
repented, as he was about to ask the citizens of Nineveh to do, and was
obedient to God, then he discovered life for himself, and for the
people of Nineveh. Renewal and regeneration came when he did the hard
work of being obedient to the Lord.
The problem with obedience is that it is a tough
sell. You hear the words “be obedient,” and it sounds as if you are
being asked to eat your vegetables and exercise 30 minutes a day.
There’s just nothing exciting about it, nothing to get you pumped up
and inspired, even if someone tells you you’ll really feel better and
have less stress in your life.
Obedience isn’t easy, and to those looking from the
outside, it might at first seem like you’re adding stress, because we
might be laughed at or misunderstood. It might seem illogical to
put the interests of others ahead of our own. Obedience to God
could send us into territory hitherto unexplored, and it’s true we
can’t be sure what God might ask of us. Just considering all that
might make some of us pretty nervous and stressed out.
Being obedient doesn’t come any more naturally to us
than it did to Jonah. But as we learn to accept God’s grace, and
see the signs of God’s transforming Spirit working in the world, we’ll
find we gradually learn how to turn the other cheek, love even our
enemies, and become peacemakers—even praying for those who seek to
cause us harm. And that’s going to make us feel a whole lot
better because our lives will be defined by joy, not by stress!
So, before you book your ticket for Tarshish,
remember that while being in God’s service can look from the outside to
be nothing but stress-inducing, it is actually a way of life that
brings overwhelming blessing and a sense of peace. Amen.
5 Real Road (corner of Stockdale & Real)
Bakersfield, CA 93309
Phone: 661-327-1609
FAX: 661-327-4443
Sunday Services & Church School: 10 AM
(Services last about an hour, dress is casual)
Nursery care available
E-mail: firstcong(at)postoffice.igalaxy.net
Webpage editor: dinah.campbell(at)gmail.com)
Free Counter | |
