Why worry when stress is stressful enough?

                   Here I am, once more endeavoring to delve into the depths of young adulthood and the tribulations that this stage of life carries. I am but a humble servant to age’s woes and cannot claim to have surmounted them all, yet I beseech you to consider my voice. With increasing frequency of my entries, I strive to connect more with you peers and with The Father, and so I ask each of you to hold me accountable for the substance of my transcriptions just as He does, that it may not be simply pabulum or other insipid babbling, but words that, once spoken, plant seeds within each of you and sprout to produce new life. With my overly verbose and silly preamble concluded, I now turn to the heart of the matter.

Generation Y faces a unique predicament. Generations past have taken a short leap from adolescence into maturity. We millennials now face the quandary of an intermediate stage thrust between the juncture of boyhood and manhood. This phase in development, rather enigmatic, boasts new challenges from which prior generations have been shielded. Young adults are presently treated as Frankenstein’s monster. We are no longer children, yet by society we are not deemed fully adult, and so we oscillate between the two, blindly tackling the challenges set before us. Consequently, our generation is plagued with unprecedented quantities of stress. Now, I postulate that stress intrinsically is not the beast to be conquered, but the worry that follows. Austrian author Hans Selye once said, “It’s not the stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.” I claim that stress, in a healthy regimen, is beneficial to the soul. Stress demands timeliness, which prompts action and dissuades laziness or complacency. The obstacle arising is not the stress in itself, but the worry. Even the tritest of ministers in their pulpits proclaim the message in the sixth chapter of Matthew stating, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” None other than our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ decreed this message, and so is it logical to conclude that worry and all of its cohorts serve no purpose in our being? I insist no. Jesus himself in the garden of Gethsemane met unparalleled portions of stress, so much so that he sweat drops of blood. I take heart in this example, knowing that my savior endured identical tension that we encounter daily. So to you my readers I say, delight in the stress bestowed upon us because it is through the fiercest fires that iron is tempered.

This brief hoorah declared by yours truly stands not as a persuasion to dismiss stress, but an encouragement to weather the storm. We must march forward with heads held high and with the fortitude to tackle life’s contests. I thank you all for your growing intrigue toward an impassioned individual, and when worry begins to engulf the world around you take heed that 1) the tomb is empty 2) God is faithful.

Love sick or sick of love?

The following is not my intellectual property, for possessing any amount of such requires a measure of intelligence. This rant is simply my overzealous extrapolations of this past Sunday’s lesson from preacher and servant, Mark Smith:

Tamar was a respectable woman. She was a beloved daughter of King David, and was valued not only for her nobility but also for her chaste temperament. For Tamar’s purity and innocence, she was adorned with garments that the text describes as “ornate” or “many colored.” I’m certain that many are familiar with the destiny of a more prominent Biblical character that possessed a “coat of many colors,” and so we need not strain our minds to assume hardships were to ensue.

Tamar had a brother (technically a half-brother) named Amnon whose feelings for his sister lied outside the realm of acceptability, and he recognized that no proper union could result from his feelings, and so he plotted. I’ll spare you the details of the plot and the deviousness through which the schemes were carried out, but because of one man’s lust, Tamar’s chastity was tainted.

I’ve now arrived to the crux of the passage and where my tirade may begin. Many ancient (and some modern) societies practiced active polygamy, and though I am not calling David’s character into question, he did have a son who actively participated. These polygamist societies spoil and pervert women’s worth and destroy any credibility for men. The naïve banter of some of my contemporaries may claim that we in America have resolved the strange belief, but I would say only in the strictest of senses. I say that the same principles are alive and well on college campuses throughout the country. Brother Mark Smith aptly stated that college campuses are societies of “soft polygamy.” In this quasi-polygamist society, there exist two congregations, those I’d like to call the more mature who date to find a mate for life, and the “hook-up” culture activists.  The “hook-up” culture does not offer several partners like polygamy stipulates, but in a sense doesn’t it? Certain demographics (whose names and organizations I shall not include) are well known for these tendencies, and these so-called adults demean not only themselves but those with whom they interact. Not only does this society stigmatize college campuses, but what hurts me most is that it also stigmatizes love in itself. The transgressive behaviors ruin love for the culture’s beneficiaries and even for those participating in the former category. Kids reduce love from this deep and (in the literal sense) awesome connection, to a shallow, physical perversion of God’s intentions. What’s even more damaging is that it is an appealing society, so those looking for true love will be left wanting. One true love is becoming an endangered species.

From my jumbled, scattered, and yet pointed remarks, you may be able to surmise in which tribe I claim citizenship, but despite my allegiances, I would like to apologize to all of those who’ve been hurt by this society, and to all those who have discredited love, I say keep your heads up. Lastly, for everyone else whom this article has no affect on, I ask to remember two things: 1) The tomb is empty 2) God is faithful.