If there were one word everyone could agree on to describe twenty-first century living, it would surely be stressful.

Anyone here this morning want to deny that we face a host of stress-inducing factors in this world? How about terrorism. How about war? How about avian flu? How about global warming, or diminishing resources, vanishing species, increasing Population, or WMD's? Not to mention the Islamic Republic of Iran with a head of state who's on record wanting to nuke Israel out of existence?

And that's just the background noise behind each of our own individually experienced stresses: money crunches (how easy has it been to pay YOUR bills this month?), aging parents, health problems, teenager kids, imperious bosses, devious employees, furious traffic jams, injurious job, serious comp…