My first waking thought the other morning was; if this were to be my last day alive, what would I do differently? How would I want my life to change? And then it got really scary; how do I know this isn’t my last day? – on average around 2000 people die in the UK every day.
It’s not morbid to think like that, for it focuses the mind on the one thing that causes stress, sleepless nights and crippling anxiety; worry about the future, and mostly worry about money. Even though we know it’s futile, we say we can’t help it.
I tend not to be a worrier, although like most of us I have my moments, but recently I’ve been pondering on an old scripture from Philippians 4 that I used to beat worriers over the head with; ‘Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.’ ‘So there you have it,’ I would say. ‘The Bible says don’t worry! So don’t worry! Easy, isn’t it?’ But it’s not easy; worriers will always find something to worry about! However, if you look behind the words, there’s something else worth seeing.
Typical of the brand of religion that I grew up with, we weren’t always encouraged to read in the context in which something was said. We’d read half verses plucked conveniently from the middle of a conversation. You know the story; an old lady used to flick open her Bible at random, close her eyes, put her finger somewhere on the page and read. One day her randomly chosen verse was, ‘Judas went out and hanged himself.’ She didn’t like that one very much so she repeated the exercise and this time she read from Luke 10:37, ‘You go and do likewise!’
We were taught that if we prayed about everything, told God what we needed and thanked him for all he had done, it was like a mantra, we would magically get whatever we asked for. But that’s not what it says and there’s a lot of disappointment and anger rooted in that misunderstanding. It says, ‘Pray about everything. Tell God what you need, thank him for all he has done, and the peace of God will guard your hearts and your minds,’ and a couple of verses later there’s icing on the cake: ‘And the God of peace will be with you.’
That is the perfect antidote to worry; the peace of God to guard, and the God of peace to comfort. There’s an eternal principle written in stone and signed in blood that few recognise, and we are the poorer for it. Jesus said, ‘Make the Kingdom of God your primary concern and he will give you all you need from day to day.’
So, why do we worry? Our problem is that because we’ve lost sight of how totally reliable our Father is, that little line in there, ‘from day to day’ bothers us. We like to have our fridges well stocked, just in case he doesn’t show up tomorrow.
But we can trust him. He doesn’t lie. He has always been faithful, and he always will be.
