No Worry in the World

by Tom Pappas

Matthew 6:25-34 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?

I tend to be a worrier. It doesn’t take much for me to fabricate a scenario where the most unlikely eventuality will probably happen.

My friend Dwayne jokes, “Worry must work, because 90% of the stuff I worry about never happens.” I have adapted his joke to the form, “Worry works, because I was worried about X and X didn’t happen.”

I tried this on our nephew last month during a delightful visit with him and his family in Seattle. We had completed a fabulous Alaskan cruise and added a sight seeing day. Our conversation was about my occasional ability to book inappropriate plane reservations.

For this cruise I noted that it departed at 4:00pm and we could fly in on the same day and be in Seattle at 9:56am. Perfect, I thought. Then I realized that we would depart at 6:54 from LNK, arrive at DEN at 7:25, change planes and depart DEN for SEA at 8:01. You can’t imagine how much I agonized about those 36 minutes in DEN. 36 minutes! The number of dire and expensive consequences I imagined by missing the connection is astronomical.

Also astronomical is the number of people who said, “We always get to the port city the day before the cruise.”

But we made it. We got to DEN early and left a bit late. And as I related the saga and then attempted to try my (Dwayne’s) line on Chad, I said, “Worrying must work  .   .   .” but before I could complete the joke, our nephew wisely whipper-snapped, “That’s your choice.”

Whuh?

Are you a worrier too? Join me in learning to believe I can choose otherwise.

I will be working on listening to Jesus, through Matthew, via Chad. Thank you, young man.