The Way of Worry

 “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”

Michel de Montaigne uttered these words 500 years ago, and how true they are today! If you read them when things are going well in your circumstances it almost makes you chuckle, knowing inside that it really is the truth. Looking back to my own childhood and the worries I had is laughable now. Would I have enough babysitting money to go skating with my friends on Friday night?  Would I get invited to the party? What if the doctor’s visit included a shot? Would it rain on field trip day? Oh, to have those kinds of worries as an adult!

We can all laugh at our childlike worries, but we don’t graduate from worrying with our high school diploma. Worry follows us into marriage, parenthood, careers, everyday life—only the problems are bigger and more serious most of the time.  Worry is the same whether it’s about skating money or where the mortgage payment is coming from. It really does us no good.  God understands the very human emotion of worry, and as always, He has the remedy:

Let him have all your worries and cares, for he is always thinking about you and watching everything that concerns you. 1 Peter 5:7

It can seem like we are always thinking about our concerns, running them over and over again in our mind. It helps to remember that the way of worry is deceptive– that most of the things we worry over never come to pass. A wise author once wrote about the shepherds keeping flock in the fields of old, how they went before their precious sheep, rod and staff in hand. Nothing could touch the sheep in their care without going through the shepherd first. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and we are the sheep of His flock if we put our trust in Him. Tempted to worry about your present circumstances? Give those worries over to the One Who stands between “them” and you!