It is evident that people of all ages, despite constant advancement in technology, science and education, are experiencing and/or being subjected to increasing stress whether in the home, playground, classroom, work place or in social, religious and especially political arenas. Perpetual violence has been instilled in our society from infancy through innocent Cowboy & Indians, Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Nintendo and other violence oriented themes including the still popular Batman series.
I can never forget greeting my daughter and her triplets upon their arrival from summer vacation with the news of the multiple killings that had occurred in a Colorado theatre during their journey home. When I asked my grandson, the first in the house, if they had heard of it on their way in he just laughed and said, “Oh, that’s just Joker! He always does that kind of thing…” and proceeded to describe the situation to a T that no one had a clue about at that early stage.
Since and even before then the stress factor in far too many homes (not always as urban and lower class as perceived) has scarred many an infant and youth in different ways.
Change in itself can cause stress. But every thing in nature changes, some gradually, some instantly and sometimes even drastically with the more gradual much easier to handle-–whether for better or worse. At the very core of much of today’s stress, however we find gross materialism in all segments of society, perpetuating attachment to worldly things, which begets greed, anxiety, fear, prejudice, jealousy, animosity, etc. But most of all lack of appreciation of anything or anybody, a situation analogous to far too many of today’s children and adults alike.
In more un-and under developed nations and territories, as well as this nation in its infancy, children made many of their own toys, adults made their own clothing, grew their own food and crops and sharing was the master key to it all. Compare this to the high cost of today’s often inferior workmanship in the commercial mass production of it all and our total dependence upon convenience.
As all things in man and nature progress only to a certain point before beginning to decline, the time may be approaching for a rejuvenation of man’s spiritual nature to match acceleration of his physical, mental, scientific and technological development.
The time may be at hand for us to accustom ourselves and especially our children to hardship, as advised in the Holy Writings of Baha’u’llah–believed by the Baha’is to be the most recent of God’s Messengers for this new, advanced millennium in which more people are beginning to feel free-–of all including God.
As torrential rains and cataclysmic winds increasingly ravish different parts of the nation here and abroad, there may be appearing warning signs of the advantage of accustoming ones self and family to hardship in order to minimize the stress of tests.
“Tests do not come to us by chance,” we’re told in the Baha’i Holy Writings, “They are sent to us for our own perfecting. When a man is happy he may forget his God. But when trials come and sorrows overwhelm him, then will he remember his Father in heaven Who can deliver him from his humiliation.” But for tests, one may forget to “Lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth.) Psalm 121:1-2
Tests are necessary to reveal to us our own weaknesses (God already knows them). Were it not for tests the genuine could not be distinguished from the counterfeit; the courageous from the coward, the weak from the strong. Through spiritual transformation we are better able to “Behold our signs of guidance” that is there for each one of us that enters this earthly realm we learn in this new dispensation.
“Unto each has been preordained (not pre-destined) a certain measure, as recorded in God’s mighty and guarded Tablets. This can only be achieved, however through your own volition. Your own acts attest to this fact.”
We must learn to first recognize and then “Follow your signs of Giudance” if we hope to reduce the stress of impending tests. (Investigate! – 1-800-22UNITE)
