Recently, the Surgeon General issued an advisory focused on Parental Mental Health & Well-Being | HHS.gov . Among the findings driving the advisory were that parents of children aged birth-18 have far more high stress than other adults, and these parents are way more likely to feel overwhelmed by stress than other adults. This advisory comes on the heels of two teen mental health advisories, one focusing on Youth Mental Health | HHS.gov in general and the more recent one addressing the impact of Social Media and Youth Mental Health | HHS.gov in particular. 

We also know that older adults are under great stress from dealing with dementia and other health concerns, financial vulnerability, functioning safely in an increasingly technological world, loneliness and isolation, and the list goes on. We’re almost at a time in which the normal distribution has the most people struggling with stress, and those on the margins are doing ok. At least from my perspective as a pastor, I can tell things are different now than they were 30 years ago. 

There aren’t many people left who grew up during the Great Depression, and their parents are long gone. We can look at pictures from Dorothea Lange, such as Broke, baby sick, and car trouble! – Dorothea Langes photo of a Missouri family of five in the vicinity of Tracy, California – Dorothea Lange – Wikipedia , and see that most people then had serious stress. I remember hearing stories of people who went under then, who gave up, who didn’t make it. But the people telling me those stories did make it through, and from many of them I learned some lessons about resilience.

Recently, we went through a series of epistles and read some of the “house rules” people like Paul laid down for God’s people (see 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24 for example). What those rules do is produce a culture of resilience marked by care for all. Practicing them helps us individually be more resilient in the face of adversity and human frailty, and collectively distinct in our ability to help people flourish. The rules reduce stress, primarily by using things like forgiveness and patience to ease the tensions between us, but they also urge us to “strengthen the fainthearted and support the weak”, doing what we can to encourage and materially help each other if needed. 

Sometimes people wonder why God doesn’t do anything about the problems we face in this world. He has: He’s given us each other. As Harry Ogden reminded us, we need to DO the word!  We need to trust each other enough to share our burdens and help each other, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). We also need to earn each other’s trust by demonstrating care and love consistently. Or as Johnny Mercer put it, we’ve got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and don’t mess around with Mr. In-between!