Worrying about something is good: we worry because we care, and when we stop worrying it means we have stopped caring! What do we do though when we worry about things that are out of our power? We cannot allow ourselves to simply become despondent: instead we entrust them to the Lord, asking for the peace that comes from letting Him do as He wills, and for the wisdom to discern what we can actually do!
I like to worry about things. I hate being worried about things, but I like worrying about them. I worry about the state of the Church, about the state of our society, about the state of the world. There is a healthy level of worry, which shows we are actually concerned about other people – we worry about the Church because we are concerned for people’s salvation, we worry about our society because we are concerned for people’s happiness, we worry about the world because we are concerned that future generations might not get to enjoy the wonders of God’s creation in the same way we have. It can be good to worry, because those worries spur us on to action, they make us get up off our backsides and do something positive about them.
However, these worries can very easily become toxic if we let them. We can let our concerns turn into anxiety, dread, and despair. When we realise that the problems we face are beyond the little power we have to change things, we can very quickly lose hope. Down this road of hopelessness we cut ourselves off from our concern for others, because it causes us too much pain to see their suffering and be helpless to prevent it. When St Paul says there is no need to worry, it is this kind of despondent, anxious, hopeless, worry that he means.
What do we do, when the weight of the world starts to crush us? When we begin to feel helpless and hopeless? St Paul supplies the answer:
if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus.
Pray, but note that St Paul instructs us to pray with thanksgiving. Don’t pray for something and only thank God once you’ve been given it. Offer your worry to God in prayer, and thank Him then and there, for whatever He chooses to do. The way out of worrying about the big things is to trust them to God’s providence.
When we know we are powerless, instead of despairing and laying down on our bed in our despondency, we still have to get up off our backsides and do something. But the something we have to do is get back down again, this time on our knees, and ask the Lord to step in and help us. We must pray to the Father with Christ in the words He taught us; your will be done, your kingdom come. God’s will not mine. God’s kingdom, not mine. He hears our petitions and concerns, and then He does what He wills, in His own time.
The Protestant Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr composed a beautiful prayer, a prayer that can help us put aside worry and trust in God, without abdicating our responsibility to care for one another, and to act when those actions are in our power. It’s called the serenity prayer:
O God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can; and the Wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. Taking, as Christ did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will; and that I may be reasonable happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him in the next. Amen.
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