Be Still My Soul

Daily writing prompt

What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?

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I don’t think in terms of strategies really. I do want to maintain my health and well-being. The main thing is not to do anything that’ll put my physical, mental, or spiritual health in danger.

However, I do have a few habits that help me. For physical health, for me, it’s mainly walking. That helps me too mentally, as does playing music. And spiritually, reading the Bible, praying, and having Christian fellowship makes a big difference. I could also answer today’s question as I answered another prompt a few weeks ago: How Do You Waste the Most Time Every Day. My answer was Worry 😀 – very definitely time not well spent. And a major aspect of self-care is doing whatever I can to minimize that. Prayer is one way, but there are other solutions, as I touched on in the Worry post. I won’t bore you by repeating myself. And of course, I don’t avoid visiting my doctor or dentist. I try to visit both at least once a year.

I don’t think that we should be passive about our health and just trust in God. We should be active, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t bring everything to God in prayer:

Phil 4:6-7
⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

And as our faith increases, we will be more at ease, but I don’t believe that we’ll ever be totally free of physical, mental, and spiritual problems in this life. I don’t think that we should understand Phil 4:6-7 as some sort of a magical solution to our problems. I think it’s a little like a teacher saying, “if you work hard in school, you’ll get a good job”. Well, all other things being equal, if you work hard, you are more likely to get a good job. And if we bring our needs to God, our anxieties will subside to some degree, but I don’t think they’ll necessary disappear, which is why we should employ various other strategies. It’s quite clear from the life of Paul himself that he wasn’t free of anxieties and of issues with his health and well-being. It can be a daily battle, but if it encourages us to draw near to God, then it’s doing us good. And whatever is going on in our minds, we will have a deep fundamental peace that will help us get through the trials of life. But a time will come when we won’t need to worry about health and well-being:

Rev 21:4
‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”