Anxiety - June 1, 2007

Do you ever feel anxious?  I do.  It can be with relationships, my career, the future, finances… shoot just this morning my dog woke up in a panic and I was even anxious about my dog because I didn’t know what was going on.

Yesterday while reading a compilation of works by theologian Paul Tillich I came across this quote that I want to share with you:

“We are concerned about ourselves.  We feel responsible for our development towards maturity, toward strength in life, wisdom in mind, and perfection in spirit.  At the same time, we are striving for happiness, we are concerned about our pleasures and about ‘having a good time,’ a concern which ranks very high with us.  But our anxiety strikes us when we look at ourselves in the mirror of self-scrutiny or of the judgments of others.  We feel that we have made the wrong decision, that we have started on the wrong road, that we are failing before men and before ourselves.  We compare ourselves with others and feel inferior to them, and we are depressed and frustrated.  We believe that we have wasted our happiness either by pursuing it too eagerly and confusing happiness with pleasure or by not being courageous enough to grasp the right moment for a decision which might have brought us happiness.”
--Paul Tillich, The New Being

Can you relate?  I certainly can.  Life sometimes seems to be a constant chasing after the proverbial carrot at the end of the stick.  But then Jesus comes along and whispers gently in your ear:
Matthew 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Jesus I turn to you… help me to replace my worry with faith and trust in you!

Posted by matthew gamble on June 01, 2007 at 10:15 AM
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