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Worry is a biggie!  It is an insidious part of our consciousness, so intertwined with daily thought that we find ourselves worrying without even recognizing it.   

Take, for example, my relationship with my mom.  We are tremendously close.  I look forward to talking with her nearly every day.  I deeply value her counsel and guidance and she can tell by the timbre of my voice if something is wrong. 

Momma is 83.  She is blessed with tremendously good health (nearly fully recovered from her recent knee replacement.)  But even though I know that many people live well beyond her age, I carry a persistent fear of losing her.  And I will lose her, and I will be a complete and total mess.  Death is the reality no one can avoid. 

But worry takes that fear and invades our relationship, threatening to spoil the precious time we have together.  Over the Christmas holidays, I found myself thinking “What if this is the last Christmas we have together?”  With her recent surgery, “What if she doesn’t make it through surgery?  What if she’s unable to walk?  What if something goes wrong?”  When making plans for Nellie’s graduation, “What if something happens to Momma before then?  How can we even think of gathering without her?”  (Did I mention that we are very close?!) 

Instead of soaking in every moment I have with her, worry is robbing me of the joy and contentment of being together.  Worry adds nothing to our relationship and it most certainly detracts from our time together.  It reminds me of Mary Magdalene grasping at the resurrected Jesus outside the empty tomb.  She so wanted to hold on to him, to keep him with her – that she almost missed out on the glory of the event. 

When worry, realistic or unrealistic, invades our daily life, spinning again and again and keeping you from living fully and contentedly, it is sinful.  It pulls us away from our relationship with God.  The Hebrew word for faith is EMETH (vowels added), which literally means “to carry a nursing child.”  Faith is all about trust, confident dependence upon God, just as an infant is joyously dependent upon its mother.  I need more EMETH when I start to worry about my mom.  Not that she will live forever, not that I won’t be deeply grieved when I do lose her, but that God will carry me through such grief and that I will be reunited with Momma in the heavenly banquet that has no end. 

Study

Luke 9:24 

I believe; help my unbelief!

Pray

Let us pray, 

Lord God, we fear the grief that comes with love.  Work within my heart and mind.  Replace worry with trust, fear with peace, and anxiety with the contentment found only in you.  I pray in the name of the one who loved his mother, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Amen.

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Tags: devotions, fasting, fear, Lent, worry