By Janelle Alberts –
I would consider trying Botox just to give my forehead a break.
After all the holiday hoopla and the year-end reflection followed by New Year resolutions, I’m eyebrows up! What to change! What to tackle! Eyebrows down. What a mistake. What an idiot.
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My forehead is exhausted.
I’m not alone. For instance, my girlfriend confided in me recently that the number one thing her parents taught her was: Be Stressed.
They didn’t mean to. They gave sage advice. But their life spoke for itself: if you’re not worried about something, you’re not thinking hard enough about everything.
My forehead can relate. It’s a stressful world.
However, the apostle Paul told the Romans not to conform to the pattern of this world.
Denial.
Did he mean live in denial?
Denial can be productive. It helped FDR get elected four times by denying to the American public that he was unable to walk and proved it by strapping his legs in a harness under his clothes then clinging to his son’s arm and putting one foot in front of the other right up to podium platforms for speeches.
Is denial the same as refraining from worry?
What comes to mind is, “…he maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”
I once heard a woman speak on that verse and the whole of Psalm 23. She said shepherds had to force their sheep to lie down, sometimes pushing them down. That sounds rough when I write it, but when she demonstrated, she was wearing pretty jewelry. Her nails were painted coral. She used a stuffed, fluffy sheep as a visual aid. She rubbed its back then gently nudged it into a snuggled position on some fake grass.
That could be pleasant. Restful. Restorative.
It all depends on the shepherd.
The writers of the Bible migrate to the same point: people have a job to do and Someone greater than them is filling in the cracks. Someone is on it.
Is Someone?
Yes. We’ll see that Someone as we observe this Bible and its characters.
Here’s to a banner 2013. And so we begin.
Janelle Alberts is a humorous freelance writer who integrates Bible stories into the minutiae of our personal, daily lives. Her website: http://www.janellealberts.com/.