Are you dealing with directional challenges in your soul today? Not sure how to find North on your spiritual compass? You're busy with work and family responsibilities, or juggling school and friends. You're multi-tasking as never before, listening to your iPod while checking email on your cell phone and surfing the Web on your computer.

We know more about the future than ever before, or at least we think we do. We have tests to tell us the gender and even eye color of our children nearly the moment they're conceived. Aptitude tests gauge our expected success at a college, major, or company. We know more about extending life than any society ever has. And yet all our diagnostic tools and prognosticating expertise doesn't seem to have made us any happier. We are living longer, but are we living better?

Last week we used our Friday essay to discuss the perennial problem one writer calls "the tyranny of the urgent." We learned to begin each day with Jesus in control of our lives, and to trust him to guide us to significance rather than stress. This week I'd like us to complete that thought, in the most practical ways possible.

We are working on average 20 percent more hours per week than we were in 1973. But the quality of our lives is not improving; in fact, it is suffering. Recent studies report that 60 percent of successful professionals suffer from chronic stress and depression. 48 percent of top corporate executives report that their lives are empty and meaningless.

Matthew 6:25-34