A Worried Mind

The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. -- Nahum 1:7

Nahum is writing about the impending destruction of the Assyrian empire and the city of Ninevah – the very people to whom the Lord sent our favorite reluctant prophet, Jonah.  The casting down of earthly empires, the desolation of nations, the rise and fall of kings and kingdoms is part of the cycle of history.  We have lived so long in power and prosperity and stability we have a tendency to think that everything will work itself out in our favor.  We are shocked by setbacks, like what happened September 11, 2001, but we are easily distracted by the cares and concerns as well as the pleasures that percolate through our lives.  Now one thing seems urgent, now another, soon memory of that terror slips from our minds displaced by the ding in the car door, the irritating boss at work, fixing the kids’ teeth, wondering if we can afford that a new gigantic flat screen like our neighbor has, or even a good cup of coffee. 

I used to be happy-go-lucky, never troubled or worried then I quit drinking and smoking dope.  I also surrounded myself with people who fret about and see the dark side of everything, also known as in-laws.  It’s contagious.  My wife’s family thought that if you weren’t certain that everybody was out to get you and disaster was lurking around every corner, you were just not paying attention, or you were stupid.  This is especially true of my wife’s older sister of whom it may well be said, she’s not happy ‘til you’re not happy. 

Life is full of scary things.  Bad news abounds and we are going to hear it, and sometimes we’re going to be terrified participants rather than merely concerned spectators.  Pretense and denial do no good.  The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it (Proverbs 22:3).  This is true, but it is equally true that apart from the Lord, all our best-laid plans and preparations can easily come to nothing.  No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the LORD (Proverbs 21:30).

The only safe place is in Christ.  I do not know what is coming to me personally, to this country, or to the world.  I know that at some point, regardless of how well I live and how careful I am, there will be things that will overwhelm me if I try to face them on my own.  The market for anti-anxiety medications, anti-depressants, and sleeping pills is thriving. 

And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken (Luke 21:25-26).

Or as the KJV says, Men’s hearts failing them for fear … 

When the plagues fell upon the rebellious land of Egypt, the Israelites were living in Goshen, which is usually thought to be in the area around the Nile delta.  Throughout Egypt there was pestilence, darkness, storms, and destruction, but the land of Goshen was protected and preserved.  The Israelites lost nothing and suffered none of the disasters that fell upon their Egyptian masters. 

No matter what happens on the outside, in the world, in this country or that one, if we remain in Christ, we need not lose our peace, our abundant life in Him, or our joy.  So much of what vexes us is not all that important, and what is important is best entrusted to God's oversight.  If I am worried, my mind is on the wrong thing.

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you (Isaiah 26:3)

     

The Taxes of Perception

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves as weapons for righteousness. – Romans 6:12-13

In the sixteenth verse, Paul goes on: Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey? We are mastered by and thus empower whatever we obey. So I have a question. What if someone wants our attention only? Are we empowering that entity by paying attention?

Our thoughts and certainly our minds are as much a part of our mortal body as hands or feet. To think on a thing is to, in a sense, yield our minds to it. There must, however, be a distinction between being aware of evil or threats or danger and the giving over of our minds as a “weapon of unrighteousness”. To simply consider a situation or an event, to observe and analyze even the most heinous thing is not the same as allowing our minds to be brought under the dominion of sin.

At the beginning of Miracles, C.S. Lewis says: What we learn from an experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. If we bring God’s perspective to our experiences in the world, we will derive from them God’s wisdom. If we approach our experiences from the world’s horizontal perspective, we will likely be conscripted into the army of unrighteousness. Our attention will be fastened on and fascinated by the world’s machinations as they appear from the flatland level.

I notice that I have been paying much attention to the wrong things recently. I’ve yielded my thoughts, my attention, and much of my space, if you will, to entities that crave that attention and are probably empowered by it. Governments, politicians, cable television hosts, news readers, and other flatland entities need to be put on a starvation diet – of attention before they are starved of monies. Governments can print monopoly money, but they cannot manufacture the power over me that they derive from my giving them undo attention.

There are consequences to the actions even of fools. Those consequences on the plane of material existence may have an adverse effect upon me. Nevertheless, I will not yield my thoughts to be used as a weapon against the good. By playing a fool’s game I become, if not a fool, indistinguishable from a fool. I am not saying that we should ignore completely the actions of the current cabal of idiots that would stand reality on its head to feed their cravings. I greatly appreciate the protestors who did their best to deliver an emergency shipment of reason to alleviate the plague of stupidity rising with the miasma of the Beltway swamp. But, now, the blathering simply needs to be turned off. The beasts have shown that even their beastliness exists only in a single dimension. I will step over them as I would step over a pile of dog poop and move on. I am aware of it. I will avoid it. I will not give it undue attention.

So it should be with much that would ensnare us.

You will keep in perfect peace the mind that is fixed on You (Isaiah 26:3).

I Know Who Holds My Hand

Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. --Philippians 4:6

You will keep in perfect peace the mind that is dependent on You, for it is trusting in You. --Isaiah 26:3

Don’t worry about anything. Pray about everything.

Consider this my Christmas blog entry. It may be my New Year’s entry as well.

There are plenty of things to worry us these days. Given the temperatures here on the Plateau, global warming is officially off my list of those things. In Psalm 37, the Psalmist says that we should not fret or “be agitated” for such a state of mind leads only to harm. Worry certainly comes naturally to most of us, and it isn’t limited to one segment of the population. The rich worry as much as the poor; believers seem to worry about as much as unbelievers.

Why do we worry? Obviously we must get some reward for fretting or we wouldn’t engage in it. We seem to think that worry somehow prepares us or gives us control over a situation. We often actually equate it with being prepared. As humans we are blessed with the ability to enter into a state of altered consciousness, narrow our focus and work through solutions to problems. We can pick up complicated objects and turn them over in our minds without ever putting our hands on them. We can make three-dimensional realities out of two-dimensional pictures. Worry is a kind of trance state where we enter into a situation that is bothering us. We are there looking for a solution, which is not bad in itself. The problem is that we do not know all the factors or what is actually going to happen. We wind up working off expectations, past experiences, or related experiences. We may create multiple scenarios and try to think how we’d deal with each one, or try to imagine how we’d get the best possible scenario to play out.

When we are dealing with concrete situations over which we have control, e.g., building a dog house, such forward thinking is useful and necessary. On the other hand if I am worrying about possible disasters, abstractions, or the uncertain future, it is worse than useless. Not only are most things beyond my individual powers, they probably won’t be even close to what I am projecting. Worry is a waste of time.

The cure for worry is prayer, with thanksgiving. If I am troubled or burdened with cares about the future, I need to pray until the burden lifts. If I am willing to pray and honestly turn my problems over to the Lord – as He desires I should do – I can have and maintain perfect peace. It may take a while to free myself from agitation, but it will be worth the time I invest.

As Paul tells us, giving thanks is a big part of this process. If I relentlessly petition God and try to harangue Him into giving me my way, then I am merely worrying in a different format. Expressing my dependence on the Lord is what will bring peace and rest to my soul. Thanksgiving means that I acknowledge God’s sovereignty, power, wisdom, mercy and grace. Giving thanks is a function of relying on the Lord to deal with the situation as it is rather than whatever I might imagine it to be.

If you are feeling some trepidation when you see 2009 dead ahead, don’t fret over it. Take your burdens to the Lord, and leave them there.