Luke 10:38-42 Matthew 6:25-34
A cartoon showed a young chick running around and yelling, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” A frog said to the chicken, “I can’t believe you chickens! You’re always worried about some disaster happening to you. If your father could see you now, he’d be turning over in his gravy!”
There are a lot of people I know who practice the Chicken Little stress management technique. The more stress they are under, the more they worry. And the more they worry, the more stress they feel. There are lots of words to describe this condition: Type A personality; the need to control; obsessive/compulsive disorder; even a real go-getter. And during this stressful time, our ineffective and even harmful ways of dealing with stress may come to the surface even more than usual.
But when anxious people handle stress in these ways, it can and often does affect their health in negative ways. Two of the most common diseases in this country are stomach ulcers and heart attacks, both of which are stress related. As the saying goes, the ulcers are caused not so much by what you eat, but by what’s eating you. Worry can affect our judgment, our ability to make decisions, and our ability to deal with life. In other words, being anxious about whether you can cope with life just makes you less able to cope with it. Someone once commented, “Worry is like a rocking chair; it will give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.”
Is there a better way of coping when you are anxious than by worrying? Or perhaps even manage to face life without being anxious?
Let’s look at the story of Mary and Martha, one that most of us have heard before. And we’ll also look at a portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which gives the same message.
Jesus was apparently a frequent guest at the home of his friends in Bethany, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. On this particular occasion, Mary chose to remain in the room where Jesus was teaching his disciples, while her sister Martha was working away in the kitchen preparing a meal for the hungry travelers. Jesus commended Mary and corrected Martha, and he was very clear about what the real issue was.
First, Jesus spoke to Martha. She was distracted by her worry and her anxiety about many things, things that didn’t even matter much anyway. Worry does distract us. It keeps our minds occupied with the “if onlys” and the “what ifs” and the “whys,” and leaves us with no attention or energy or enthusiasm to give to the really important things in life. We worry about the past, but we can’t change it. The past is past. No amount of thinking about it can make it different from what it was. By the same token, we worry about the future. This kind of worrying is also useless because things rarely work out the way we are afraid they will. Worry can make mountains out of molehills. Peb Jackson remarked, “Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.” Worry encourages us to “borrow trouble,” or as someone has put it, “Worry is interest paid on troubles before it falls due.”
Jesus was making the same point when he spoke about worry in the Sermon on the Mount. He said that we should not worry about the things that don’t really matter anyway: food, drink, clothing. (Maybe even not toilet paper.) Life is much more than those things. Worry doesn’t add anything to life, not even one hour; in fact, worry can rob us of years of our lives. As the saying goes, you can worry yourself into an early grave. Jesus didn’t say that we shouldn’t be prudent; we do need to be responsible in taking care of ourselves and our families. But when we are too concerned with what we eat or what we wear, we miss what matters most in life, things like relationships with God and with each other.
During this time of pandemic, we have been made more aware than ever before of what matters in life. It isn’t sports, or Hollywood celebrities, or eating out, or going to movies, or even getting our hair done. It doesn’t matter what type of car we drive or what brand of shoes we have on our feet, or even what brand of food we find on the shelves. What matters is our family, our loved ones, our faith, our relationship with God, our health and safety. We should not worry about these things, either, but rely on the grace and power of God and on the strength of our faith to get us through this time of crisis.
Jesus warned Martha, and us: Don’t be distracted by worry.
Second, Jesus spoke to Mary. He said that Mary focused on the one thing that does matter: the Kingdom of God. It is no accident that the more we focus on God, the less room we have in our hearts and minds for worry and anxiety. When we are doing God’s work in the world, we will be too busy to get mired down in worry. Leo Aikman wrote, “Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.” That kind of echoes a saying of Victor Hugo: “Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have finished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake!”
The key to a worry-free life is a God-filled life. Fear and God cannot occupy the same place at the same time. The writer of 1 John told us that perfect love casts out fear. God is perfect love. It is basically a matter of trust in God. Do we believe that God is ultimately in control? Then why are we so afraid of letting go of our own need to be in control? Why are we scared of trusting ourselves into the hands of a trustworthy God? It is time we put our money where our mouth is. It’s time to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. I can’t promise you that life will be perfect when you trust in God. Life isn’t perfect for anyone. But I can promise you that God is perfect in his love and faithfulness and grace. There is nothing that can happen to you that God will not help you to handle.
That may sound incredibly naïve or like so much wishful thinking. It may appear unrealistic. How can I tell you that is possible to live without worry and anxiety in a world where people get sick and die, where little children are shot dead in their school-yards, where babies are diagnosed with terminal cancer, where terrorists strike without warning? I would have to be crazy, wouldn’t I, to suggest that God’s peace can dwell in the hearts of those who are watching their aging parents drift away a little more each day, or of those who are struggling financially because of lost jobs, or of those whose families are torn apart by conflict, or of those who are lonely or confused or abused? But I’m not crazy, at least not about this. It is possible to give up worry. I am a case in point.
I used to be my family’s token worry wart. No one else had to worry; I worried enough for all of us. I lived the Chicken Little method of stress management. I worried about the past, I worried about the future. I worried when I couldn’t think of anything to worry about. I worried about my grades. I worried about my roommate’s grades. My stomach took the brunt of it, and I always took my college exams in the desk closest to the door in case I had to make a run for the restroom. I worried about child abuse and world hunger and the national debt. I was an expert at worrying.
So, what happened? What changed me? How did I give up all that worry and anxiety?
My mother was diagnosed with cancer. Now, that may sound really nuts. After all, for a worrier, this situation called for an expert like me. And, at first, my level of stress and anxiety went up about a thousand percent. But then, learning from my mother’s example, I started to live just one day at a time, not thinking about tomorrow or next week or next month. I just thought about today. And I knew that, with God’s help, I could get through this one day.
That is the way we should all live, anyway. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. The only one who controls tomorrow knows what he is doing, and he will get me through it, one way or another. I just need to focus on today. As Jesus said, “Do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
I had a cousin who lived on Lady’s Island, just off the coast of Beaufort, SC. I sometimes heard her talking about her neighbor across the street. She suffered from agoraphobia and was afraid to leave her house. She hadn’t always been that way. And I don’t know how it happened to her, if it was caused by some traumatic event, or what brought it on. But she stayed in her home all the time. She didn’t go to the grocery store, or the farmer’s market, or church services. She didn’t watch her children participate in sports or perform in piano recitals. This woman lost her friends, one by one, as they went on with their active lives and she remained secluded. I don’t know whatever became of her. But I do know that she missed her life. Her fear had such a death-grip on her that she wasn’t really able to live at all. Her fear paralyzed her. It cheated her out of the joy and beauty of life. In some ways, she was already dead.
Jesus wants more than that for us. Jesus wants us to live in him, to give up our worry and fear and anxiety. We need to trust that God will provide for us. John 10:10 records the words of Jesus, “I have come that they may have abundant life, life to the full.” There is no better summary than the words of the old gospel song, “Many things about tomorrow I don’t seem to understand, but I know who holds tomorrow, and I know he holds my hand.”
Take hold of God’s hand and be confident about the future. Let the peace of Christ enter your heart and remove the fear and anxiety and worry. Live the full life that God intends for you. Even in these abnormal and difficult times, we can have peace, we can live without anxiety. We can trust God, who has proven over and over again to be trustworthy.
