Harried executives and overworked house wives have at least one thing in common--they are using tremendous amounts of energy. Often it is energy they can't really afford to put into the task at hand, but they feel they have no alternative and must continue the frantic pace of their lives to survive.
Living requires expending energy. This is not always obvious. It is easy to see the energy spent on a game such as volleyball. There is sweating, gasping for breath, and much shouting. But even the effort spent in grief, in the form, of crying and tears, uses energy. The formation of tears takes energy from the body as the tear glands are pressed into service for the peculiar production of this fluid accompanying grief.
All the activities in which the body is engaged take energy to perform, and this defines one of the forms of stress. Stress is the normal wear and tear caused by living and coping with people, situations, and problems.
How can we know if we have enough energy to cope with today's needs? To a great degree this depends on the kinds of needs that we face daily. We meet needs by calling on one of three types of energy. This article will deal with the kind of energy called adaptation energy.
According to the late Dr. Hans Selye, probably the world's foremost researcher on stress, the living organism is endowed at birth with a certain amount of energy. When this energy--the energy needed for adaptation to life and its stresses--is depleted, the organism dies. Thus death comes as the result of a loss of adaptation energy.
Long before Dr. Selye began his experiments, however, the concept of adaptation energy was elucidated by Ellen White. She wrote, "God endowed man with so great vital force that he has withstood the accumulation of disease brought upon the race in consequence of perverted habits, and has continued for 6,000 years.... If Adam, at his creation, had not been endowed with 20 times as much vital force as men now have, the race, with their present habits of living in violation of natural law, would have become extinct... . Man came from the hand of his Creator perfect and beautiful in form, and so filled with vital force that it was more than a thousand years before his corrupt appetite and passions, and general violations of physical law, were sensibly felt upon the race."1
The adaptation energy noted by Hans Selye and the vital force Ellen G. White spoke of seem to be the same commodity--the energy that is God's gift not only to the human race at its inception but to each of us individually.
The importance of this vital force in maintaining health is underscored by this statement: "Those who make great exertions to accomplish just so much work in a given time, and continue to labor when their judgment tells them they should rest, are never gainers. They are living on borrowed capital. They are expending the vital force which they will need at a future time. . . . God has provided us with constitutional force, which will be needed at different periods of our life. If we recklessly exhaust this force by continual overtaxation, we shall sometime be losers. Our usefulness will be lessened, if not our life itself de stroyed." 2
This is the picture that too many of us, God's people, are painting in our lives day by day. We are working, playing, and living so hard that we are actually borrowing from tomorrow's energy stores. Ellen White has indicated other ways in which we may deplete this precious store of energy. The negative result of doing so lends credence to the practicality of God's laws. Among the activities and factors that will hasten the loss of vital force or adaptation energy are (1) poisonous drugs, 3 (2) excessive grief, 4 and (3) tobacco.5
Physicians can often tell who have been expending this treasure too rapidly. Such infirmities as ulcers, certain skin rashes, inflammation of the lower bowel, and asthmatic attacks can be caused by a too rapid expenditure of vital force by overworked executives, harried house wives, and hard-pressed students.
According to Selye, when the vital force is expended, we die. The writings of Ellen White tend to confirm this. How important it is, then, for each of us to guard stringently that most vital of all energy stores, the "vital" energy.
Jesus' secret energy source
On His way to the home of Jairus, a ruler of the Jews, Jesus was proceeding through the crowded, narrow streets, being bumped and jostled. Suddenly He cried out, "Who touched Me?" To this query the disciples answered, "Many people have touched You!" But Jesus realized that this was not an ordinary touch. It was the touch of faith that implored healing, for virtue had gone out of Him. It takes energy for even God to heal!
On one Sabbath day Christ preached the sermon at the synagogue, healed a man with an unclean spirit, cured Peter's mother-in-law of a fever, taught His disciples, and, after the sun went down, healed all in the city of their infirmities (Mark 1). Certainly the Master spent a tremendous amount of energy on that day.
What He did next offers hope to all of us whose world and ministries are tremendously demanding. That energy that created the worlds and heals the sick, that God the Creator has given to man as a trust and by which he lives his life, can be renewed. The last part of the first chapter of Mark indicates that after Christ had completed all the activities described above, He lay down for just a while, and "in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed."
It might appear that the most judicious thing to do after such an exhaust ing day would be to stay in bed as long as possible. That is probably what most of us would have done. Just why, then, did Jesus get up to pray? Perhaps the answer is found in this statement: "Vital energy is imparted to the mind through the brain." 6
We can actually receive more life from God by bringing our minds in contact with the Life-giver. No wonder Christ came from the sessions with His Father "refreshed and invigorated." 7 Perhaps the greatest challenge to the faith of a Christian is to develop such an intense prayer life that it invigorates rather than tires, refreshes rather than exhausts, gives rather than takes.
In this world of hurry and bustle, where effort sometimes seems more important than results and where we are caught up in the fever of performance, it is good to know that the Christian has special counsel on avoiding the deleterious effects of this stress-filled existence.
Prayer! This is the means that God has designed to bring us into contact with Him for the imparting of vital force to our lives. When this is coupled with habits of temperance and the other precepts of health reform, life becomes the wise expenditure of energy that maximizes our service to the world around us and allows us to use profitably the time that God has given us.
1 Ellen G. White, Testimonies, vol. 3, po. 138,
139.
2 Ellen G. White, Counsels on Health, p. 99.
3 Ellen G. White, Selected Messages, book 2, p. 281.
4 The SDA Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White
Comments, vol. 3, p. 1146.
5 Ellen G. White, Temperance, p. 64.
6 Ibid.,p. 74.
7 Ellen G. White, Testimonies, vol. 4, p. 528.
