This week one of the lessons from Morning Prayer was the well known passage from Luke. "Jesus said to his disciples, 'I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.  For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?"' (Luke 12)  After reading the lesson, I shared with a friend, "Easy for Jesus to say.  He's not worried about retirement.  He doesn't have a mortgage and he doesn't have to put any kids through college."   Worry and stress are unfortunate byproducts of our culture.

Recently someone gave me an article, "Stress.  Why It's Making You Sick."  Times are hard.  Pressure is great.  We are working longer hours.  There are more demands on us at the office and home.  We are pulled in a thousand directions.  People have lost jobs and others fear that they too will become unemployed.  The stock market is down and anxiety is up.   We are "stressed out!"  

A little stress (key word - little) can actually "increase productivity and creativity, too much can be mentally and physically damaging." (Basler, AARP Bulletin, May 2009)  We passed the "little" level a while ago and can now see the effects of prolonged and "high" levels of stress.  It's making us sick not just physically, but mentally and spiritually, as well.  Worry and stress takes so much from us, there's nothing left to give.  Our blood pressure goes up.  Our patience runs thin.  Relationships are strained.  Mind, body and spirit go left unfed. 

Our world is going to continue to be "stressed out," but it doesn't mean that we have to be "stressed out," too.  Excessive worry and stress will not add a single hour to our lives, in fact it takes precious time from us.  Jesus was on to something. (That shouldn't surprise us!)   Today, find some time to pray, even if it's only for a minute.  Close your eyes and breathe.  Rest in God.  Trust in God's goodness.  Let us be kind and patient.  It's a stressed out world, but God is good!

Paul+

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• In the George Thomas room, greet one another in fellowship for relaxing conversation
  

This week's Gospel is about 'sanctification', a concept that the great John Wesley, founder of Methodism and an Anglican priest all his life, took to be the key to Christian discipleship. But what does it mean?  'Sanctification' sounds rather too like 'sanctimonious', something we surely want to avoid. But it just means 'being made holy' in the way that the saints are said to be holy, and thinking about the difference between saintly people and sanctimonious people is a good place to begin. Saintliness is a large topic. This Gospel passage emphasizes two ideas that are of great importance. The first of these is the contrast between life in God and life in the world. Saints live in the world, but they live for God and in Christ, and this always carries the danger that they will be reviled, or hated even, because they will not go along with the way the world is, the way 'realists' would like them to. Second, their holiness does not rest on rejecting this world, but rather being committed to living in the truth about it. And they hold - as Jesus teaches - that whatever the world thinks, God's word is truth. So we can think of saints as specially compelling Christian witnesses, people whose words and actions present a perpetual challenge to the false faith that economic prosperity, political success and social prestige are the indispensable elements of a life worth living. And, as Wesley taught, we can aspire to sanctification ourselves.