This is National Stress Awareness Day.

Every now and then, a city engineer will report a bridge needing work because of “stress cracks.” The daily pounding of traffic and the years of changing temperature and other forces have taken their toll. If not repaired, the bridge might collapse.

People can experience stress too. Life’s pressures wear on us, making us weak and worried. The signs include headaches, sleep problems, nervousness, and a constant bad mood. Remember when a parent seemed to get mad about every little thing? Later you learned about the tough day at work. The stress led to anger that was taken out on others.

Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. After a rough day at school, with teachers piling on the homework, you learned that a friend was in an accident. Then, on the way home, you had an argument with a friend. And just as you walked in the door, Mom reminded you of all your chores. Talk about stress! Can you feel the pressure, the cracks? No wonder you were in a bad mood.

Life is filled with anxieties, worries, and stresses—we can’t escape them. But we can deal with them. The first step is to be aware of what is causing us stress. Next, the Bible tells us, we should, “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you” (1 Peter 5:7). This means praying and giving our stress to our loving heavenly Father. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be concerned about your friend, dive into your school assignments, heal your relationship, or do your chores. It means realizing that God cares about you and your life situations more than you do, and he’s there to help—you can count on him.

So cast your cares on the One who cares.

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done (Philippians 4:6).

To Do

Take an index card or a small piece of paper and list all your present cares and worries that cause you stress. Then pray about each item on the list one at a time saying, “I know, Father, that you care about ______ more than I do, so I give this to you. Thank you.”

Also on this day . . .

1867—Wilbur Wright, one half of the airplane-inventor team, was born.

1922—Annie Oakley shot 100 clay targets in a row, to set a women’s record.

1972—Two giant pandas arrived in the United States from China.

From Betsy Schmitt and Dave Veerman, 365 Trivia Twist Devotions: An Almanac of Fun Facts and Spiritual Truth for Every Day of the Year (Cincinnati: Standard, 2005). Scripture quotations are from the New Living Translation unless otherwise noted.