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Take a little wine for your stomach (or, how to live well in a stressful world)

You definitely get the sense in Paul’s two letters to Timothy that he is writing a young and anxious pastor who is hanging by a thread. You can hear the anxiety and depression in Paul’s advice: “Take some wine for your stomach,” he tells Timothy. “Remember that if you’re suffering for the gospel, you’re not the first to do that, and you won’t be the last.”

This is Paul encouraging a young leader who is beginning to question his call because frankly, this is hard. Bearing other people’s burdens will give you stomach problems.* Watching them slide backward after you’ve done so much to move them forward can make a person downright depressed.

And all the pastors said, “Amen.”

Timothy is frustrated. It seems almost like the folks with whom he lives have gone deaf. The message he has for them seems to have no effect. Maybe they’d rather believe comfortable things than uncomfortable things. “Maybe Jesus was more like a ghost than a flesh-and-blood man,” they say, because that is an easier answer to grab onto than the idea of a man who is fully human and fully divine all at once.

Battling heresy can wear a person out.

Some of you are right there with him. Just tired. Tired of weekly reports of terrorist attacks. Tired of the day-in, day-out stresses. Tired of a political scene that only reveals our corporate insanity. Tired of conflict and misunderstandings. Tired of physical issues and mental issues and marital issues. Tired of the battle.

The question seems inevitable: Why bother? 

William Blake once wrote, “You ought to know that what is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men.” Whether he meant to or not, Blake is paraphrasing Paul, who told the Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).

Both the apostle and the poet are saying the same thing: God uses foolish things, foolish people, ordinary people, obscure people, nobodies, everybody to accomplish his purposes. And in fact, God refuses to accomplish his purposes without those partnerships, no matter how obscure or foolish.

In that word, I hear a word for Timothy and all of us who dare to listen: Hang in there, because what you do with your life matters.

What sets us apart who serve this gospel is not sheer force of will nor sheer enjoyment. What separates us from “crazy” is the character of the one in whom we place our faith, which is proven by the character he brings out in us.

It is not crazy to stand for truth, to live by a moral code, to trust that there is more to life than just fallen people. It is not crazy to make your life count for something more than a bank account balance (after all, the one with the most toys still dies).

It is not crazy to look beyond a job to a vocation. In fact, it is perhaps the most courageous possible choice. Maybe you will work hard and sleep less and endure criticism or worse yet obscurity; which is to say, we’re not the point even of our own calling. And that ends up being quite the point.

We don’t always (or maybe even ever) get the results we think we deserve. But here’s what we do get. We get the one thing that makes all the rest of it worth it: We get Jesus.

On this day, may that be encouragement enough to help you begin again.

 

* Just for clarity’s sake, I’m not proposing that we deal with stress by buying a bottle of wine. Been there, done that and by God’s immense grace, I enjoy a beautifully sober life. The point is that life can be hard but Jesus is good. And Jesus is worth it.

Carolyn Moore

I follow Jesus.

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Holiness is at least this: a design of life that exposes us most fully to the heart of a good, loving and creative God.