Sufficient Unto the Day
So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.
Matthew 6:34
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, an older translation says. One day at a time, the recovering addicts say. Same thing.
Sure, you have to plan -- stuff doesn't just fall into your lap. But planning and worrying aren't synonyms. Planning is developing strategies, which is a good idea. Worrying is experiencing pain in advance of its actual arrival in your life, which is not a very good deal.
Planning makes life easier. You don't have to flail around, wondering what to do first -- you've already given the matter some thought. If you're a good planner, you've even built in some flexibility to deal with the unexpected things that you know will always occur, and have resolved to be alert for signs of the new solutions that might go with them. There is a solution for everything.
Worry makes things harder. It paralyses your thinking, riveting it on the terrible thing you think might happen and preventing you from seeing the new thing that really does. Worry blinds and deafens us. I can't think of a single useful function for worry. We do it as a futile means of controlling events, sort of like an amulet -- I'll just carry this dreadful vision of what might happen to me around, and keep the real thing at bay -- but it never works. When we worry, we're like the man who always carries a bomb onto a plane because the odds of two people carrying a bomb onto a plane are so impossibly low.
So how do you stop worrying? It's not helpful just to string your worries together, tack an AMEN to the end and call it a prayer. We need prayer to take our worries away, not to load them back onto our own shoulders. Rather than making your prayers into a list of your worries, consider instead using your imagination to visualize your worries as an untidy bundle of dirty laundry, which you gather together and leave with God. Leave it at the foot of the cross, or leave it wherever you visualize God being -- leave it on God's doorstep, leave it at the edge of God's sea, put it securely into God's very hands. Never mind that God doesn't really have hands or a doorstep -- this is imagination we're talking about here. Just picture yourself giving your untidy bundle to God.
Do this each time worry overwhelms you. Do it in pictures, not in words, or you'll be off and running with your list of worries before you know it. Do it several times a day, if that's what it takes -- there's no statute of limitations on prayer.
And be patient with yourself -- you've probably been a worrywart for a long time. Don't expect to stop being one in an afternoon.
--
The Almost-Daily eMo from the Geranium Farm Copyright © 2001-2008 Barbara Crafton - all rights reserved
Matthew 6:34
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, an older translation says. One day at a time, the recovering addicts say. Same thing.
Sure, you have to plan -- stuff doesn't just fall into your lap. But planning and worrying aren't synonyms. Planning is developing strategies, which is a good idea. Worrying is experiencing pain in advance of its actual arrival in your life, which is not a very good deal.
Planning makes life easier. You don't have to flail around, wondering what to do first -- you've already given the matter some thought. If you're a good planner, you've even built in some flexibility to deal with the unexpected things that you know will always occur, and have resolved to be alert for signs of the new solutions that might go with them. There is a solution for everything.
Worry makes things harder. It paralyses your thinking, riveting it on the terrible thing you think might happen and preventing you from seeing the new thing that really does. Worry blinds and deafens us. I can't think of a single useful function for worry. We do it as a futile means of controlling events, sort of like an amulet -- I'll just carry this dreadful vision of what might happen to me around, and keep the real thing at bay -- but it never works. When we worry, we're like the man who always carries a bomb onto a plane because the odds of two people carrying a bomb onto a plane are so impossibly low.
So how do you stop worrying? It's not helpful just to string your worries together, tack an AMEN to the end and call it a prayer. We need prayer to take our worries away, not to load them back onto our own shoulders. Rather than making your prayers into a list of your worries, consider instead using your imagination to visualize your worries as an untidy bundle of dirty laundry, which you gather together and leave with God. Leave it at the foot of the cross, or leave it wherever you visualize God being -- leave it on God's doorstep, leave it at the edge of God's sea, put it securely into God's very hands. Never mind that God doesn't really have hands or a doorstep -- this is imagination we're talking about here. Just picture yourself giving your untidy bundle to God.
Do this each time worry overwhelms you. Do it in pictures, not in words, or you'll be off and running with your list of worries before you know it. Do it several times a day, if that's what it takes -- there's no statute of limitations on prayer.
And be patient with yourself -- you've probably been a worrywart for a long time. Don't expect to stop being one in an afternoon.
--
The Almost-Daily eMo from the Geranium Farm Copyright © 2001-2008 Barbara Crafton - all rights reserved