Trouble

In a deeply disturbing scene in the television series “The Crown,” Prince Philip recounted to Queen Elizabeth his moving experience at a funeral for 81 children who had died in the tragic mudslide in Aberfan. (During a heavy rainstorm in October of 1966, a massive pile of accumulated coal waste positioned above the town of Aberfan turned to slurry. The massive flood tragically overwhelmed a school and a row of houses).

The dialogue went like this:

The Queen: How was it?

The Prince: Extraordinary. The Grief. The Anger – at the government, at the coal warden…at God, too. 81 children were buried today. The rage behind all the faces, behind all the eyes. They didn’t smash things up. They didn’t fight in the streets.

Q: What did they do?

P: They sang! The whole community. It’s the most astonishing thing I’ve ever heard.

Q: Did you weep?

P: I might have wept. Yes. Are you going to tell me it was inappropriate? The fact is that anyone who heard that hymn today would not just have wept. They would have been broken into a thousand tiny pieces.

The mourners who gathered at the funeral at Aberfan sang the hymn “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.”

Jesus, Lover of my soul,

Let me to thy bosom fly,

While the nearer waters roll,

While the tempest still is high.

Hide me, O my Savior, hide,

Till the storm of life is past.

Safe into the haven guide;

Oh, receive my soul at last.

Other refuge have I none;

Hangs my helpless soul on thee.

Leave, oh, leave me not alone;

Still support and comfort me.

All my trust on thee is stayed;

All my help from thee I bring.

Cover my defenseless head

with the shadow of thy wing.

Trinity Evangelical Divinty School professor Kevin Vanhoozer writes about caring for his aging mother in an issue of CT magazine:

For nine years now, I have been watching my mother’s identity slowly fade as memories and capacities switch off, one after another, like lights of a house shutting down for the night. Marriage may be a school of sanctification, as Luther said, but caring for aging parents is its grad school, especially when he or she lives with you and suffers from dementia.

It’s been said that as we become older, we become caricatures of ourselves. Dementia speeds the process. It’s easy to see why: With loss of executive cognitive functioning, we’re less prone to monitor what we say and do. We begin to fly on auto-pilot, re-tracing again and again well-trod paths.

What lies under … the social masks we have carefully constructed? What lies under my mother’s happy face? (“I’m fine,” she’d say, even after a fall). I recently discovered the answer.

Years into the dementia, she lost her last line of defense and began to voice her inmost thoughts aloud. “Father, don’t let me fall” accompanied her every shuffling step behind her walker. Initially I thought this terribly sad—clearly, she wasn’t fine but anxious—yet I eventually found it comforting. The Bible depicts life as a walk: Shouldn’t we all be praying to the Lord to help us avoid missteps? Though she had forgotten former friends and neighbors, and large swaths of her own life, she remembered the fatherhood of God.

While booze has, for thousands of years now, been the most socially acceptable form of self-medication, its many health detriments have pushed some to seek alternatives: shrooms, weed, pharmaceuticals, kratom, or some other wellness industry offering.

But why not just skip the drugs? What’s so bad about sobriety? In an article in Vox, Rebecca Jennings notes: “The world is really tough. The world has only gotten more anxiety-inducing and more challenging over the past decade or so. People are looking to numb out, they want to medicate their anxiety.”

But Jennings concludes with some startling observations about the movement, ones that point well beyond alcohol replacements:

There’s a dream that basically everyone in the world shares. It’s the dream of an alcohol that isn’t quite alcohol but almost is — a substance that will make you feel free and happy and sexy and chatty but also won’t get you addicted, won’t shave years off your life, won’t make you groggy and achy and anxious the next day. It’s the dream of a substance from which taking an entire month off as part of an annual challenge would be laughably absurd because why would anyone ever need a break from it?

Possible Preaching Angle:

If this sounds like the search for utopia, you’d be right. For her part, Jennings is deeply skeptical this utopia is ever possible: “Such a substance could never be more than fantasy because of course human beings would find a way to render it destructive.” But for Christians there is the always available, always effective promises of God (Psa. 23:1-3; Phil. 4:6-7).

Only a fifth of Americans have experienced “true comfort” in the past 24 hours, according to a new survey. The poll of 2,000 Americans reveals that true comfort—feeling completely relaxed or at ease—can be hard to come by, as just 21% say they’ve been able to reach this state.

The survey also finds that the average American only feels comfortable for a third of the day—roughly eight hours.

The survey reveals that more than anything else, taking a nap (47%) is the top way respondents find true comfort. This is followed by taking a walk outside (41%) and having a spa day (36%), rounding out the top three ways respondents prefer to find comfort in their day.

When temperatures drop, respondents say they also find true comfort in taking a hot bath (34%) and creating the perfect temperature at home (25%)—which is 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Christian does not look for unreliable temporary comfort in the things of this world but genuine and lasting comfort through our Father in heaven, who personally comforts us (2 Cor. 1:4), with eternal comfort (2 Thess. 2:16), through the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:31), through his promises (Ps. 119:50), and by means of his rod and his staff (Ps. 23:4)

Doom and gloom over the state and future of humanity is prevalent and pervasive globally. A New York Times piece by Tyler Harper gives an excellent summary and overview over our existential anxieties:

The literary scholar Paul Saint-Amour described the expectation of apocalypse. It is the sense that all history’s catastrophes and geopolitical traumas are leading us to 'the prospect of an even more devastating futurity' — as the quintessential modern attitude. It’s visible everywhere in what has come to be known as the polycrisis.

Climate anxiety ... is driving debates about 'the morality of having kids in a burning, drowning world.' Our public health infrastructure groans under the weight of a lingering pandemic while we are told to expect worse contagions to come. The near coup at OpenAI, which resulted at least in part from a dispute about whether artificial intelligence could soon threaten humanity with extinction, is only the latest example of our ballooning angst about technology overtaking us.

There are serious concerns that the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine could spark World War III. Apocalyptic fears feed off the idea that people are inherently violent, self-interested and hierarchical and that survival is a zero-sum war over resources.

What makes an extinction panic a panic is the conviction that humanity is flawed and beyond redemption. That it is destined to die at its own hand, the tragic hero of a terrestrial pageant for whom only one final act is possible. The irony is that this cynicism greases the skids to calamity. After all, why bother fighting for change or survival if you believe that self-destruction is hard-wired into humanity?

Possible Preaching Angle:

This attitude of growing fear and societal decay should not surprise the believer. This is what Paul described in 2 Timothy 3:1-13: “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days … while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” But we have hope that we can share with the world (1 Pet. 3:15), Jesus is the “light of the world” (John 8:12).

The world began a weekly group therapy session with Frazier Crane thirty years ago. This spin-off character from Cheers played by Kelsey Grammer, emerged as an iconic counselor who masterfully blended humor and wisdom. While Grammer is an actor by trade, his years playing a therapist has given him lasting insights into the human psyche.

In an interview with The Guardian, Grammer was asked how he felt attitudes towards therapy has changed evolved over the last 30 years. After wrestling with the question for a few moments, he concluded with this:

God is probably the best therapist, without wanting to get on too big of a preachy soapbox. I just think if you have faith, you’re probably one step ahead of the storm of everyday life today. There is insanity everywhere. It’s a global phenomenon. It seems to be cooked into our governments. It’s a difficult road to navigate on your own.

If there was any doubt that the national mood could need a dose of uplift, more evidence showed up in late January. On X (formerly known as Twitter), the account for Elmo, the red Muppet from Sesame Street, asked what seemed to be a simple, innocuous question.

“Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”

In thousands of responses, social media users let Elmo know that no, they were not doing too hot. Users began pouring out their hearts to Elmo:

• “I’m tired, Elmo,” said one user.
• “The world is burning around us, Elmo,” said another.
• “Elmo I’m depressed and broke,” one wrote.
• Others told Elmo that they were anxious about the 2024 election.
• “Each day the abyss we stare into grows a unique horror. one that was previously unfathomable in nature,” replied author Hanif Abdurraqib. “However, I did have a good grapefruit earlier, thanks for asking.”

“I don’t think anyone anticipated how deeply this particular question would resonate,” said Samantha Maltin, a marketing officer for the Sesame Workshop. Maltin believes that Elmo’s question provoked a lot of feelings because his character is rooted in the nostalgic memories of so many millennials.

After about nine thousand responses in about 24 hours, the account posted again. “Wow! Elmo is glad he asked!” it read. “Elmo learned it is important to ask a friend how they are doing.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is more important than ever to have dependable friends who will listen to us and to whom we will give a listening ear. Let’s remind ourselves and others that God is always available to hear our troubles and provide “mercy and find grace in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

In 2019, David and Ina Steiner were running a newsletter called CommerceBytes. The newsletter reported on a lawsuit by online retailer eBay alleging that its rival Amazon had poached many of its third-party sellers. The Steiners probably knew the story would anger officials at one or both of the tech companies, but had no idea how far they might go to retaliate. As it turns out, they went too far. Way too far.

The intimidating harassment included bizarre and unexpected deliveries of items to the Steiners’ home, including live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig mask. U.S. Attorney Josh Levy said, "eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct.”

James Baugh was eBay’s senior director of safety and security at the time. Prosecutors called him the ringleader of the harassment, citing an email where he called Ina Steiner “a biased troll who needs to be burned down.”

The company announced in January it will pay a fine of $3 million to resolve criminal charges levied against several of its employees in connection with a campaign of harassment against the Steiners.

The CEO of eBay, Jamie Iannone, called the employee behavior “wrong and reprehensible.” He went on to say, “since these events occurred, new leaders have joined the company, and eBay has strengthened its policies and training. EBay remains committed to upholding high standards of conduct and ethics and to making things right with the Steiners.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Uncontrolled anger and a thirst for revenge can lead to many costly mistakes, both in the business world and in a person’s private life.

A woman in Sunderland, England nearly leapt to her death from in 2018 from Wearmouth Bridge, very well known as a place where people come to end their lives. She now returns to that site regularly to post messages encouraging others who are having a rough time to get help.

Paige Hunter, now 21, says that when she was a teenager suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, she found herself standing at the edge of the bridge, thinking about ending it all. That’s when a pair of Good Samaritans approached Hunter, telling her “You are worth so much more than this.”

That not only stopped her from jumping, but changed her life. The next day, Hunter wrote those eight words that were told to her on several pieces of paper and posted them all over the bridge where she had her epiphany. That’s where her campaign, Notes of Hope, began.

Since then, Hunter said she’s left over 1,000 laminated, handwritten messages on the Wearmouth Bridge encouraging others struggling with mental health issues to seek help. She’s received lots of feedback and thinks she’s saved dozens of lives through her efforts—and even improved her own. Hunter said, “It’s definitely therapeutic for me to write these messages.”

25-year-old Callum Doggrell said his life was saved by Hunter’s efforts. “I was going through a really rough patch, and I was at a point in my life where I didn’t want to be here anymore,” he said. That was in early 2019. He thought about his one-year-old son and other loved ones and decided to push past his trouble and carry on. He and Hunter are now in contact.

Sometimes, all it takes is a minor inconvenience to ruin your whole day. It has been revealed that the most stressful time of the day is 7:23am. On average people will experience three dramas each day, with the first drama of the day typically happening by around 8:18am. These stressful situations could be anything from being stuck in traffic or waking up late, to spilling things on clothing, and tripping in public which are also likely to make people feel foul.

The research found that tiredness, an interrupted night's sleep, and a busy day at work were among the top causes of such dramas. Zuzana Bustikova, a spokesperson for a wellbeing brand, said: "Often when we think 'drama' we think big, but the research shows how much of an impact seemingly small niggles can have on our daily moods.”

According to the survey, the following are some of the top everyday “dramas” adults experience:

• Getting stuck in traffic
• Spilling something down clothing (food, drink, make-up, toothpaste)
• Waking up late and being late for work
• Struggling to find a parking space
• Forgetting bags at the supermarket
• Public transport being cancelled
• Sending a text message to the wrong person
• Checking your bank balance and having less money than you expected
• Clothes you want to wear being in the wash
• Realizing an email you thought you’d sent is in your “drafts”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Taking small steps to build our emotional resilience, even on those difficult days, can make a huge difference in helping us live life to the fullest. For a Christian these small steps can include having a regular quiet time with God every morning. This will center our thoughts on him and give us resources to meet life’s frustrations and stresses that are inevitable each day.

Psalm 46 says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” A particular scene from Fury, a movie set mostly inside a World War Two-era tank of the same name, brings this beautiful promise home.

In the waning days of the war as American soldiers flood into Germany, we’re transported to a field where a group of GIs are exposed and pinned down by German fire, helpless to do anything but wait. They are definitely in trouble.

Suddenly, “Fury” and a pair of other tanks break through and advance, guns thundering away at the German positions. Do the GIs rise and charge ahead, side-by-side with the tanks? No! They simply roll to where the tanks are, slide in behind them and move ahead, letting the tanks do all the work, letting the tanks do what they were designed to do.

It is the same with God. Notice the psalmist says that God, and he alone, is our refuge, our strength. Not God plus our abilities or God plus our strength or wits or might. Just God. Sometimes, it’s best to simply slide in behind him in obedience and let him do what only he can do.

Many of the world’s greatest souls became their best selves not in spite of but because of their distress. The great hymn writer Cowper wrote hopeful hymns and the great artist Van Gogh brushed epic paintings while contemplating suicide. Charles Spurgeon preached some of his best sermons while depressed. Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King Jr. battled melancholy. The great composer Beethoven went deaf. C.S. Lewis buried his wife after a short, cancer-ridden marriage. Elie Wiesel and Corrie Ten Boom survived the holocaust. Joni Eareckson Tada lost her ability to walk in a tragic accident. John Perkins endured jail, beatings, and death threats from white supremacists.

As grief expert Elizabeth Kubler Ross famously noted, “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known one defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation and sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep love and concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

In the early days of World War II, the stress of the war began to take its toll on Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England. His wife Clementine grew alarmed. A member of Churchill’s inner circle told her that Churchill’s sarcastic and over-bearing manner was starting to discourage his inner circle of leaders. Clementine decided to speak the truth in love.

“My darling Winston,” she began in a letter, “I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; and you are not so kind as you used to be.” She cautioned that in possessing the power to give orders and to sack anyone and everyone, “he was obliged to maintain a high standard of behavior—to combine kindness and if possible Olympic calm.” She reminded him that in the past he had been fond of quoting a French maximum, meaning, essentially, “one leads by calm.”

She continued: “I cannot bear that those who serve the country and yourself should not love you as well as admire and respect you.” But she warned, “You won’t get the best results by irascibility and rudeness. It will breed either dislike or a slave mentality.” She closed the letter with these words: “Please forgive your loving, devoted and watchful Clementine.”

Apparently, the letter got through to Winston. The next day people reported that he seemed remarkably at ease. He lay in bed, propped up by his bed rest as he gazed adoringly at his cat, Nelson, sprawled out peacefully at the foot of the bed.

When Gustavo Alvarez lost his home in Los Angeles, there was a bitter irony that added insult to his travail. The fire that consumed his home started in a homeless encampment behind his home. Initially, insurance payments made it possible for Alvarez to move his family into an apartment while the home could be rebuilt. But the temporary housing benefits only lasted six months, which left Alvarez with nowhere near enough time or money to complete his home renovation.

Alvarez told The Los Angeles Times, “We are saving up to fix the house. But the $1,400 of rent for our temporary home has been an added expense. My wife is working at a clothing store to make up for some of it … You work day and night for years to build something and it is gone in a matter of hours.”

When Jessica Lawson read Alvarez’ newspaper story, she was moved to act. Lawson is a disaster recovery program manager for Habitat for Humanity in the greater LA area, so she reached out. Lawson said, “I knew we had the power to help. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could actually help the family?”

And help they did. Because of Lawson’s intervention, Habitat was able to offer Alvarez a loan with highly favorable terms that would help him finish his home. After reviewing damage estimates from a general contractor, the work was done quickly, enabling Alvarez to move back in a few months’ time.

Suppose you were exploring an unknown glacier in the north of Greenland in the dead of winter. Just as you reach a sheer cliff with a spectacular view of miles and miles of jagged ice and snow covered mountains, a terrible storm breaks in. The wind is so strong that the fear arises that it might blow you and your party right over the cliff. But in the midst of it you discover a cleft in the ice where you can hide. Here you feel secure, but the awesome might of the storm rages on and you watch it with a kind of trembling pleasure as it surges out across the distant glaciers.

At first, there was the fear that this terrible storm and awesome terrain might claim your life. But then you found a refuge and gained the hope that you would be safe. But not everything in the feeling called fear vanished. Only the life-threatening part. There remains the trembling, the awe, the wonder, the feeling that you would never want to tangle with such a storm or be the adversary of such a power.

God’s power is behind the unendurable cold of Arctic storms. Yet he cups his hand around us and says, “Take refuge in my love and let the terrors of my power become the awesome fireworks of your happy night sky.”

In the fall of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued two landmark statements. The first was the famous Gettysburg Address in which Lincoln commemorated the battlefield of Gettysburg. The other statement, made just weeks before, may be a bit more surprising. On October 3, 1863, President Lincoln instituted the first official Thanksgiving holiday.

Lincoln wrote, “It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gracious gifts of the Most High God] should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.” Thus, Lincoln set apart the last Thursday of November as “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father.” Apparently, in the midst of the worst war our nation had ever seen, Lincoln thought the time was ripe for gratitude.

We may be tempted to think Lincoln’s statement of gratitude was inappropriate, naïve, or even offensive. Reading the entire text of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, however, disabuses the modern reader from the conclusion that he had (somehow) forgotten about the Civil War. Lincoln candidly addressed the horrors of the Civil War, a war “of unequaled magnitude and severity” that had transformed tens of thousands of Americans into “widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife.” But he coupled this hardship with hope, recognizing the hand of God guiding him through the valley of the shadow of death.

Conflict and gratitude. Hardship and hope. Lincoln wasn’t confused. He was seeing thanksgiving through a biblical lens.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The surprising context for the holiday Lincoln instituted is a good reminder to us today. God wants us to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess. 5:18) because it focuses our hope and future in the goodness and power of our God and not on our “light and momentary troubles” (2 Cor. 4:17).

You know the person. You work with them, or you’re friends with them, or maybe you even that person. They are youngish. Fit-ish. Always tracking their steps, sleep, heart rate, and meditation streaks. But these trackers overlook one metric: blood pressure. Those two numbers measure how well your blood vessels handle the 2,000 gallons of blood your heart pumps around your body in a day. And young people’s vessels aren’t doing the job so well.

Blue Cross Blue Shield recently released data from the claims of 55 million people. From 2014 to 2017, the prevalence of high blood pressure in people ages 21 to 36 jumped 16%. So, what exactly do we mean by “high”? We mean blood pressure that measures above 130 systolic or 80 diastolic. And when that happens, your blood vessels stiffen up, forcing blood pressure even higher. ... And a higher risk for heart attack and stroke.

For the longest time, most young people didn’t have to worry about this. Youth has always been a relative Teflon coating. Blood-pressure issues were strictly for older people, and the idea that this protection might be eroding is forcing doctors to examine what’s really going on. Here’s what they’re finding:

Millennials carry more than $1 trillion in debt. A large chunk of that is due to student loans—Millennials owe more than four times what Gen Xers do. Add this to other issues (such as bad eating habits and being overweight) and it makes sense that Millennials reported the highest average stress level of any generation, at 5.7 out of 10. (Gen Xers came in at 5.1, Gen Zers at 5.3, and boomers at a relatively zen 4.1.)

In June of 1992, Gloria Davey and a few friends were walking in the English countryside. When they stopped for a rest, they discovered a ruined church (from the bombings of World War I). The church had been desecrated by satanic symbols. When she told her husband Bob, a church leader at another nearby church, he was horrified at what he saw. That moment, the recently retired Bob made a decision that would dominate his life for the next 22 years. He would restore St Mary’s Church.

He said, “You couldn’t see the tower, and there was no roof, windows or floor — nothing, really. But I felt it was my duty to save it. This annoyed me intensely. I've been a Christian all my life and wasn't putting up with this on my watch.” He walked inside—the door was long gone—and that afternoon started clearing out 60 years’ worth of rubbish. For 22 years he was at the site early every day “except on days of family christenings and weddings,” says Bob, who has four children, six grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

He added, “I haven’t had a holiday in 22 years, but I haven’t wanted one. Who wants to retire? My advice to others: don’t play golf or buy a Spanish villa when you retire. Find yourself a ruined church to save!” Bob hasn’t just saved the church. He also uncovered a unique set of wall paintings, the earliest in Britain and some of the finest in Europe.

Bob faced stiff resistance. The satanists sent him a message: “If you continue to come here, I’ll kill you.” Bob said he wasn’t frightened. “I’ll come in an electric trolley if I have to.” And until his death in 2021 at the age of 91, that’s exactly what Bob Davey did.