We have woken up to the reality of the damage the human population is doing to the environment. Carrying capacity is the limit to the size of population that the planet can sustain; the more the population demands from the environment the smaller the population the environment can support but the population grows anyway. All this is a great concern.
There is another sort of carrying capacity that came back to mind this week as I heard the story of a particularly stressed individual. The last two years have done all sorts of things to stress levels but the case in point was not linked to the pandemic but to different incidents entirely.
For all that the population is huge and there are people around us on every side, the problem of being alone is still acute. An individual may be coping to the limit of their capacity, but people assume they are fine, because that is the image projected. Strong and competent people may not be given offers of help, or if they are, the offers made may not be the right ones. There comes a point where nothing else can fit on the plate and things start to fall off the sides.
Charles Wesley’s hymn, ‘Jesus, Lord, we look to thee’ (StF 686) says the following in verse 4:
‘Let us for each other care,
Each the other’s burdens bear,
To thy church the pattern give,
Show how true believers live.’
As we make our way through life, we notice the people who make a great fuss about stress or talk about mental health the whole time. We are aware of those who make an art form out of micro-managing everyone else’s risk. We see those demonstrating signs of pressure and we can help them, but my recent experience reminds me that there is another population amongst us too. The population of the strong who we rely on and who, often, we take for granted. These are they whom we forget to thank, or never offer to help, give more to and look to for guidance. Many of them will be quite happy, but what about the hidden number who are not fine and are about to break?
A Prayer
Lord, strong and mighty, we pray for your strength when we weaken, and we pray for your sensitivity to be aware of those whose strength is at its limit; may we see the right way to help them with their burdens and never to taken for granted those who never let us down. Make us gracious people of thanks; thankful for your love, thankful for one another’s love and thankful for everything that supports us, for Jesus’s sake. Amen.