STRESS & RELAXATION

Stress & Relaxation

I may be a bit of an expert on stress, but a dunce on relaxation! I’m the man who once asked if there was such a thing as a waterproof laptop, so that I could work on it in my hot tub! Part of my job as an army chaplain was to be a calming influence for the many soldiers who would come to me with their problems. However, I would arrive at work after being stuck in rush hour traffic every morning. Stress! Hypertension! Once, I jokingly asked an army psychologist if my blood pressure was high because the other road users were idiots. Or were they idiots because I had high blood pressure!

Neil & Juno, Isle of Skye

Every hot water tank has a relief valve to release excess pressure and thus prevent rupture. Relaxation is stress’s relief valve. What is relaxation? Well, relaxation is not one of my gifts, but I think God has finally shown me. If you’re like me, you ask God for the gift of patience, then expect Him to zap you with the gift, and not instead send you to the same school Job went to. It’s the same with relaxation. It is learned through experience. It’s all, ‘Stop and smell the roses’, with the emphasis on the word stop. But isn’t this just basic 4th Commandment stuff?

‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it’ Exodus 20:8-11. Warning: ignore this Commandment at your own peril!

Sabbath means rest. We are not to work 24/7. We are to rest for one day out of every seven. That is how God the Creator designed us in the beginning.

A car manufacturer may issue a recall if its product is faulty and susceptible to blowing a head gasket. Likewise, God has recalled humanity. However, it is not because what He made is defective. Rather it is because we use His product for something it was not designed for. We do not follow the Manufacturer’s instructions, i.e., His Ten Commandments. Therefore, either He can destroy His product. Or He can recall it for the necessary repairs and refit. We are to put down our tools and gather in His presence at least one day every week. What for? To rest. To hear the Good News that Jesus has done all the hard work for us. That He perfectly kept the Ten Commandments. That there’s no need to blow a head gasket trying to keep them in striving to be good enough for Heaven. That we can relax in Christ our Sabbath. That God has taken away all our defects, all our sins, all our Commandment breaking, including our Sabbath breaking.

God’s mass recall is every Sunday. Together we hear the Manufacturer’s instructions, the Decalogue, i.e., how we ought to live, and what He has done because we don’t live that way, i.e., the Gospel. At the cross, Christ’s perfect obedience became ours, because at the cross the Father imputed our sins to His Son, and His Son’s righteousness to us.

So, stress not. Relax. Simply find a church in which the Law and the Gospel is preached. And stop and ponder what the new humanity is like, i.e., the resurrected Jesus. Rest in Him and you will rest in peace.