“Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are?  Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? -Matthew 6:25-27 (CEB)

 

Charles Dickens is famous, in part, for his oft quoted line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I’ll add to it my own tidbit: “But, not matter what it was, at least we knew what it was.” You see, looking back, we have the benefit of having lived through our past, and so, good or bad, we know it, which makes it either a wonderful, cherished memory, or, at the very least, something we made it though. The future, however, is a whole different ballgame. The future is unknown! The future, while we know it will contain moments of good, we also know that it will have difficult – even bad – moments. The problem is, we don’t know what they will be, when they’ll be, how we’ll navigate any of it, who will be involved, and where it will leave us.

 

Take a deep breath.

 

The phenomenon of it all is that this is and always has been true. Somehow, the passage of time just puts things of the past in perspective, making yesterday look like the good old days, and leaving tomorrow look like we’re on the precipice of living out Dante’s “Inferno.”

 

Jesus understood this about us. In fact, if we go back to the stories of the Bible, we’ll find instance after instance in which people longed for the “good old days,” not because they were necessarily better, but because they were known! And so, Jesus offers us this reminder: “Don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear…Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life.” Here, Jesus is reminding us that our worry about the future, while not entirely without good reason, doesn’t ultimately help us. Instead, it simply gets in our way of living in the here and now. Worrying about the future simply because we can’t predict it doesn’t make today any better, nor does it make tomorrow any easier. In fact, what we know of anxiety, worrying unrealistically about tomorrow will likely make things worse.

 

Let’s consider an example from a long, long time ago. Imagine a cave-dwelling people, who became convinced that right outside their cave entrance was a sabretooth tiger ready to pounce the moment they emerged from the cave. Is this an entirely unfounded fear? No, probably not. If you hear the tiger’s snarl, stay inside. That’s a no-brainer. But what if every day our cave dwelling friend refused to leave the cave because of this possibility. Day and night, without ever hearing, seeing, or even smelling the sabretooth tiger, they determined that it’s just too risky. The anxiety they experience has now limited their tomorrows.

 

When are we like our cave-dwelling friend? When do we let our anxiety get the better of us, assuming that tomorrow is out to get us, that we stand on the precipice of doom? What steps to do we need to take – as individuals, as the church, as society, as creation – to emerge from the cave and experience all of tomorrow? Will there be challenging and difficult moments? Of course there will be. But will there be good times and moments worthy of our celebration? You bet!

 

And so, I close this thought process and article with these words from the Prophet Isaiah:

 

“Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; when through the rivers, they won’t sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you won’t be scorched and flame won’t burn you. I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your savior.” -Isaiah 43:1b-3a (CEB)

 

Peace,

Pastor Brian