by Pastor Douglas Brauner

Dealing with the Stress of the Season

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

Feeling a little stress in your life today? Are you checking your list to make sure that you haven’t forgotten anything? Is the house clean, the toilets scrubbed, the beds made? Are the stockings hung, the tree trimmed, the gifts wrapped?

Who’s the enemy adding to your stress? Is it time? Is it an uncooperative spouse? Is it work?

Why so many questions?

Let’s stop for a second and look at these two trees. These trees survived a horrific forest fire in the summer of 2013, the Black Forest Fire near Colorado Springs. It was one of those days that if you lived here, you remember what your were doing when the fire broke. I was driving home from a doctor’s appointment when I saw the smoke rising into the sky. I remember walking my dog in our neighborhood and watching a huge plumb of smoke rise into the air, realizing that it was probably a house burning to the ground.

Yet these two trees survived. Why? I haven’t got a clue. You can tell by the barren landscape around these trees that many other pines were not as lucky.

“Give us aid against the enemy, for human help is worthless.”
Psalm 60:11 New International Version

The enemies who rage against our lives are not time, a spouse, or work. The enemies against whom God has fought and won are sin, death, and the devil. Everyday they haunt us, poke at us, accuse us of not measuring up to God’s standards, to our standards. We often feel defeated.

Yet, we dance. We dance in difficulties because of Jesus, the One who was consumed by our enemies, yet triumphed in his resurrection. As we feel harassed by this season, by the pressure to make everything perfect, let’s remember why this baby was born, why we celebrate this time of year.

Yes, most of the time human help is useless against our stress, but the irony of this Psalm is that God chose to use a human, a human wrapped in divinity, to give us the aid we need against our enemies.

Let’s dance!

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado