What, Me Worry?
My Dad was a first-rate worrywart. Here we were on a family-going-out-West summer trip and he started as we left the house with, “Would our car hold up on the long trip and not break down?” (It did the first day.), “Would we find the campground where we had reserved a spot?” (Yes, remember these were pre-GPS days and we did.), “Would we be able to get our borrowed pop-up camper set up correctly?” (We did, uh-hum, finally.), and “Would us three bored kids not bicker in the back seat behind him and drive him crazy with our endless choruses of ‘Are we there yet?’” (Yep, we did.).
Worry, anxiety, fret, and fear. If we’re honest, many of us are professional worriers. Many of us list the “Land of Anxiety,” “Consternation City,” or “Doubtsville Street” as our home address. Our minds very easily gravitate toward the “worst thing that could happen.” We lose minutes, hours, days, and much sleep to imaginations gone wild, conjuring up “what-if” scenarios, rummaging through turbulent conversations, and digging through ugly daydreams like dogs chasing their tails round and round and to no end stressing ourselves out.
As a Jesus Follower, should this be our lot in life? Isn’t wallowing in anxiety like saying “NO” to God? When we choose fear—and it IS a choice—are we not living like an atheist as if the God of Creation and the Master of the Universe doesn’t exist?
Surely there are accurate, tried and true “job descriptions” for our Lord and our chief enemy in our Guidebook. Our foe and deceiver, the Whisperer of Fear, is to “steal, kill and destroy.” And our Hero Trinity is to build up, and give life, hope and courage. Can we not then trace our mental wonderings, our thought-life to its source of either: fear in our foe or faith in our Father?
As a Faithful Friend, He yearns to shoulder our worries, to carry our daily fretting, to massage-away our unfounded fears. “To keep in perfect peace,” the prophet writes, that we might enjoy a freedom beyond the pratfalls of the World and an assurance in an Anchor that holds in any storm.
Yes, there are concerns that are warranted, doubts that carry weight, and natural questions that seem to have no earthly answers. And it’s true, this side of Heaven, that concerns, doubts, and questions color our view and magnify the mind’s battle and soul’s war.
I want to live now like I believe He is alive and I can experience Shalom-Rest with you who believe that, too. Today, we can bring Heaven to Earth and become more and more His “Carrier of Peace” to a lost and lonely Mankind that is adrift with no answer to trust, no compass-bearing to follow and no true Friend by its side.
Peace.
-Chris