By Ife J. Ibitayo
For Part 1, “Doubt”, click here. For Part 2, “All Eyes On You”, click here.
These past several weeks have been crazy hectic. I’ve been meeting current friends to say goodbye, calling new acquaintances to say hello, and finalizing my moving plans. Just as my doctor mentioned that I need to find ways to relieve stress, I’ve been stockpiling it in heaps! I’ve found that coordinating a move across the country to a home I haven’t even found yet has been exceptionally challenging. And the metastasizing number of unknowns is triggering subliminal warning bells throughout my system.
Falling Apart
In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus poses a key question, “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life” (Matthew 6:27)?” We all know the answer to this rhetorical question, so why do we still worry?
My worry is a reflexive, visceral response. If I can’t actively manage a situation, the least I can do is focus my mental energies on it. I treat the problem like a Rubik’s cube my head. If I tweak this here and rotate that over there, maybe a solution will finally crystallize. But the Greek word merimnao means to be “divided into parts, to be distracted.” But we are terrible multitaskers. When we exert all of our mental energy on our worries, we can’t focus on what God wants us to.
Jesus goes on in Matthew chapter 6 to say we are to “seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33a).” And speaking about this kingdom, Paul says that the kingdom of God is about “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 4:17). So we should be focused on loving others by living righteously and loving ourselves by finding peace and joy in God.
Holding Together
That probably sounds like a pat answer only sufficient for a church retreat. But when the rubber of life hits the potholed road of student loans, angry bosses, and rebellious children, you may wonder how practical that really is. If you don’t spend all your time not worrying about these distressing issues, who will?
Matthew 6:33 in its entirety says, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field. God cares for everything on this planet and most of all for us. Just as children trust their parents and don’t shoulder the same worries they do, neither should we. Our heavenly Father was built to carry the weight of the world on His shoulders because He made it in the first place!
Rather, we’re called to trust Him, even if we don’t know where we’re going to sleep next month. Because God holds the universe together by the strength of His mighty power (Colossians 1:17), we can certainly trust Him to hold our lives together too.
“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
(1 Peter 5:7)