Don't Worry

 Read Matthew 6:25-34

There is godly counsel. We listen to it weekly if not daily. We should trust it.

There is our own understanding. Sometimes we can trust it if it is in sync with God’s way.

Sometimes our own understanding gets it. We are counseled to take God’s counsel over our own understanding, but sometimes our own understanding gets it.

Here are some thoughts on the matter of worry that has come from the understanding of many.

 

“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.” – Mary Hemingway

 

“Turn your attention for a while away from the worries and anxieties. Remind yourself of all your many blessings.” – Ralph Marston

 

“The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.” – Wayne Dyer

 

“A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.” – Aesop

 

“Worry pretends to be necessary, but serves no useful purpose.” – Eckhart Tolle

 

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.” – Corrie Ten Boom

 

“A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work.” – John Lubbock

 

“People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.” – George Bernard Shaw

 

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” – Marcus Aurelius

 

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“To him who is in fear, everything rustles.” – Sophocles

 

“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” – Dan Zadra

 

“If you ask what is the most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.” – George F. Burns

 

“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.” – Robert Frost

 

“Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff.” – Robert Eliot

 

“Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, faith looks up.” — Anonymous

 

“Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” – Arthur Somers Roche

 

“That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.” – Chinese Proverb

 

“Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.” – Cullen Hightower

 

“Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere” – Erma Bombeck

 

“People get so in the habit of worry that if you save them from drowning and put them on a bank to dry in the sun with hot chocolate and muffins they wonder whether they are catching a cold.” – John Jay Chapman

 

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.” ― Mark Twain

 

“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.” — E. Joseph Cossman

 

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”— Elbert Hubbard

 

“Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.”– Henry Ward Beecher

 

Jesus tells us that we can get this no-worry business and understand it from our perspective too.

Look at nature. The flowers, the birds, and everything around us rely totally on God but you don’t see stressed songbirds and flustered flowers. God knows what they need in season and he provides. We can see this. Even for the grass that lives but for a short season. God provides.

We understand this but we need help to apply it to ourselves. Sure, God takes care of the birds and the flowers and the spiders and snakes, but I’m a person. I’m more complicated.

Jesus tells us that maybe we are not that complicated. We need to trust God. We need to have faith in God. We need to put God’s words into practice and in this case, those words say don’t worry.

Yes, we may absolutely have trouble tomorrow, but it does not need to cut into today’s joy. We make reasonable plans, we listen to God when we pray and all day long while we work at our jobs as if we are working for God, we listen to what he is telling us.

We want to trust God enough that we know the outcome will be exactly what it needs to be but that we won’t worry about how we get there.

We don’t need to worry along the way.

Paul would later reinforce this thinking with his own words. Be anxious for nothing…

Understand that trouble is one thing.  Worry and anxiousness are another.

There might be a bear on the road to work tomorrow.

That’s correct but there might be a gold coin too. You should not be worried about one to the point it takes away your joy for today and you should not obsess on things that might bring you pleasure. Let today have its life and tomorrow its own life.

The Proverbs remind us that heaviness can weigh down the heart.  Jesus tells us that hope, not heaviness, should be on our hearts.

Message for today:  DON’T WORRY.

They say the proof is in the pudding, so here’s your pudding.

“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.” — E. Joseph Cossman

Amen.