Taking care of your mental health is important
God created us as whole people, our minds, bodies, and spirits woven together to form who we are. Yet, so often our practices of faith neglect our mental and emotional wellbeing. Discover what God’s Word has to say about the importance of caring for our mental health with this three-day devotional from Feed.
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You sprain your ankle, and your other leg takes on added weight to allow you to walk until you heal.
You get something in your eye, and instinctively your hands rise to cover and protect your eyes from further injury.
Your brain temperature starts to rise, so the signal goes out for a big yawn to not only stretch your jaw and increase your blood flow but also trigger a sharp inhale to cool the blood headed for your brain.
Taking on added weight or burden, protecting the injured part to allow healing, and intervening to prevent damage are all essential ways your physical body functions as a whole and not just a disconnected series of parts.
As today’s verses remind us, a body of believers functions in much the same way.
You get devastating news, and friends offer to stay with you until the shock wears off. They hold you up as you recover.
A classmate hurls an insult at you, and your parent’s words of wisdom provide you perspective and distance from the pain and hurt.
Your anxiety is escalating, and your pastor or trusted counselor steps in to address the issue and offer you relief.
With your physical body, the various parts are so intertwined that one member’s pain is immediately felt by all. In a healthy community, members are also sensitive to one another’s joys and sorrows, but that closeness is built on each member’s decision to be authentic and even vulnerable.
We chuckle at the thought of our eye trying to declare independence or even hide an injury from our hand but still fall victim to the temptation to isolate ourselves when things go wrong.
Imagine the chaos if each part of your body tried to hide its pain or deny its reliance on the rest of the body.
Your body is at its strongest, most efficient, and most healthy status when each part celebrates its unique features and function even as it recognizes its value as part of the whole.
Is it any wonder that you are at your healthiest when you intentionally choose to rely on those around you to support, protect, and defend you even as you attempt to do the same for them?
You were wired for relationship, and it is within the interdependence of community that you are perfectly positioned to be the most creative, extraordinary, contributing you possible.
- Have there been times when you assigned relative value to those around you or even yourself based on personality, background, or even experiences? Has what you’ve read changed your opinion? If so, how?
- In what ways do you think being honest about your struggles or fears creates or even strengthens community?
- Today, who can you turn to for support? To whom can you offer support?
Accompanying bible verse
NIV version
1 Corinthians 12:12-27
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.
13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.
16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.
17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.
19 If they were all one part, where would the body be?
20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”
22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,
23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty,
24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it,
25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.
26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
Catechism: Mental Health And The Church: A 3-day devotional– Day 1
