I thought long and hard...too hard about it...

One afternoon this week a second grader asked me a question. A young lady, she asked which country was smarter. Then she quickly said state. I was now confused and quickly confused her until she said again which state. I began to think, a problem for sure, how would you evaluate which state is smarter? Do you count places of scholarship, percentage of the population in MENSA, SAT score for the population which is it? That confused the child even more as she repeated her question, “Which state is smarter?” I quit and told her I don’t know. She answered Alabama with 4 A’s and 1 B the answer. I rolled my eyes and laughed a little.

That’s how it is with us. We see or experience a simple problem or situation and then our mind goes to work thinking about all of these possibilities to the point that we are parallelized by the complexity of a simple question. This process of over thinking is called worry. 

A simple problem mostly out of our control to change or affect becomes with way to much thought an out-of- control -nightmare. It keeps us awake at night or wakes us up from the soundest sleep with a burning in our chest so intense that it would kill a fire eater. You try to avoid it but you can never get away. What was a simple question becomes a monster in your own mind. Worry does that to you. The saddest part is it is really you doing it to you when you over think the problem.

Jesus speaks to our worry in Matthew 6:25-26 HCSB.

The Cure for Anxiety
²⁵ “This is why I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear.

·         All of those things are important

·         There is some uncertainty about how it will work out

·          You still don’t have to worry about it.

“There is a way to face the uncertainty of tomorrow and NOT worry about it today.”  Andy Stanley

Look at bigger picture

Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing?

·         Would you define life as equaling: retirement, child’s degree, marriage, good health?

²⁶ Look at the birds of the sky: They don’t sow, reap, or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they?

Worry is like looking through the lens of a camera. If you close your other eye all you see is what is included in that barrel of the lens. You might miss the best picture because it is in a wider view than you can see. When we focus on a problem and worry all we can see is a very small piece of a bigger picture. Jesus says look at the bigger picture of God’s provision and love for us. Children made in his image.

 Before me was a simple question with what I should have known by the questioner was a simple answer. In a split second over thought my response so much so that I missed the simple humor that was perpetrated.                          

In His Service and Yours

The Rev