Worry

The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling                                    

Arthur Somers Roche (1883–1935): ‘Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.’

It is during times like these that tension, anxiety, and worry run high in our lives. Worry. I learned long ago to consider its roots. I worry about violence, losing people I love, of being discounted and dismissed. I have worried about my vocation and family, about systems and institutions, like politics, religion, healthcare, and social services. I worry about climate change and viruses like COVID. When I get worried, I live fearfully, not faithfully.

My boat is so small, and God’s ocean is so large. Who knows what lies beneath the depths? Who knows what lies beyond the stars and the moon? Without a rudder, tossed about by winds and waves, who knows where we will land? It worries me about this fragile earth, our island home; and yet Clement of Alexandria (150-215 A.D.) once claimed that “the universe has already become an ocean of blessings!”

In my little boat of fear and worry, I know that it is good to have anchors and rudders. It is good to have motors for power and life preservers for safety. It is good to have communities of love and prayer, reminding me that “we’re in this together” and that I am not lost at sea, alone on an isolated island, or bobbing in shark-infested waters. It is good to have people like Clement of Alexandria helping me to see that I have a boatload of blessings all around me.

Jesus reminded his followers to live one day at a time, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:25-34)