“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:33-34
“Don? There’s been an accident. Faith fell off the trampoline—I think she broke her arm. I’m on the way to the hospital. Call me when you get this.”
That’s the voicemail I found waiting for me one afternoon after returning to my desk from a routine meeting on a routine day. In the space of a single heartbeat, my concern shifted from the inventory sales numbers I’d gone over in my meeting to my little four-year-old on the way to the hospital with a broken arm.
Amazing how a ten second voicemail from your wife can reorder your priorities, isn’t it? My trip to the hospital was a blur of images, each more horrible than the last, as I conjured up all the terrible things Faith could be going through. My pulse raced as I alternated between heart wrenching concern for my daughter and fist clenching fury that I could do nothing to help her.
Some of our more mundane worries can also manifest this same surge of emotions, can’t they? Who hasn’t sat around wondering if this is the winter our car is going to give out, or whether the downsizing this year would affect our job? But these worries are often compounded by a sense of helplessness that causes our stomachs to churn while moving us no closer to the problem’s solution.
Because sometimes we just can’t solve the problem. Sometimes, we’ve done all that we can do and we have to rest in the knowledge that our heavenly father who loves us and understands our needs has the universe under his control.
But other times our sense of angst comes from focusing too much on this world and not devoting enough of our attention to our father’s business. When Jesus was talking to his disciples about worrying, he told them to seek their heavenly father’s kingdom and righteousness first. Only then did he promise to take care of everything else.
I want to be a writer—a novelist to be exact. After years of practicing by writing short stories, I completed my first novel and landed an agent. She wasn’t able to sell the manuscript to a publishing house, but I just knew that my hard work was about to pay off and I wrote a second novel. A second novel that no agent wanted to represent. I remember sitting in my car, the latest rejection letter in my hand, staring at the brown envelope containing my manuscript. My quest to find an agent was consuming me. I kept Ang up at night ranting about how I’d invested money into writing classes and time into writing with no discernable results.
I remember looking at the envelope and thinking, “God, what are you doing here? I’ve got the chops to make it as I writer—I’ve been told this by other writers I respect. I’ve done the hard work, but this is still going nowhere. What is going on?”
Wait. That’s the answer I got, wait. After spending six years working with little to show for my efforts, I thought I probably had the waiting thing pegged. But with nothing else to do, I wrapped up my manuscript, shoved it in a drawer, and took an honest look at how I was prioritizing my life. I continued to write, but I no longer allowed the worrying to consume me. Now when Ang and I stayed up late, we talked about our church, about our family, about what God was doing in our lives, and about how we could better invest ourselves in his kingdom.
About that time Andy asked me to lead a strategic planning team for Lifepoint. As part of an icebreaker for our first team meeting, I mentioned that I was a wannabe novelist. That off-the-cuff comment led to a conversation with another team member who told me about a writers conference that hosted agents and editors and offered a writing contest to cover tuition. A writing contest that I won, so that I could attend the conference and sit next to another author who wrote my kind of fiction. An author who introduced me to a fantastic agent who loved my manuscript and is now trying to sell it.
And all of these things happened courtesy of my worrying, right?
Of course not. These incredible things happened when I finally got to the point where I’d realized that I’d done everything that I could do. I decided to release my dreams back to the loving father who’d planted them within me in the first place and to spend more time pursuing his kingdom.
Cinderella story? Not quite. My agent still hasn’t sold my novel. Maybe he won’t, but I’m determined not to waste my life worrying about it. You see, at its core, worrying really comes down to a question of trust. Are you going to trust in yourself, confident that you can resolve life’s problems on your own, or are you going to trust that an all powerful God will meet your needs while you chase after his kingdom?
It’s your life and your decision.
Don
