Vaccinate Yourself [Against Worry]

SCRIPTURE:  You must not set your heart on what you eat or drink, nor must you live in a state of anxiety. The whole heathen world is busy about getting food and drink, and your Father knows well enough that you need such things. No, set your heart on his kingdom, and your food and drink will come as a matter of course. Luke 12:29-31 Phillips

THOUGHT: We all need the basics and God already knows it, so why do I struggle with anxiety? It seems every day the news cycle brings tidings of something I had never considered before. News of bad germs, literal and metaphoric. Dangerous germs. Social disease that’s been sliding under the radar while I was busy trying to live, raise children, recover from childhood abuse and the relational and vocational upheaval that ensued. Jesus has healed me from so much, but now I see the world falling apart. And I often wonder, as I go about my days doing this or that – how long do I have to enjoy this person or freedom, how long before this or that is gone? And that’s just scratching the surface of my anxiety.

I don’t need to scare you with all the things I wonder about, but I do want to say that faith is sometimes a discipline. As if fighting a vicious biological weapon, we need to pour our personal resources into developing a vaccination that will keep the germs of fear at bay. Sometimes the shot in the arm I need is just the discipline to trust Jesus. Take him at his word that I don’t need to live in a state of anxiety. I need to pursue the kingdom, set my heart on what that means and how it looks and where I see it. I must let go of everything that hinders, roll up my sleeve and take the vaccine against worry: the vaccine named “complete trust.” Fly, not because I have wings, but because God does.

PRAYER: Oh God, I do believe, help my unbelief, enlarge my faith. Don’t let me miss all the beautiful things you are doing around me because I’m lost in anxiety.