Why Worry?
Maybe sometimes prayer is just “worrying out loud” before God.
So mused a friend over coffee yesterday when the subject of prayer came up. I was very relieved to hear this as I had just spent the previous forty-five minute motorcycle ride to the meeting worrying. Um, I mean praying.
My worries almost certainly are of a familiar variety. I worry about my kids endlessly. Yesterday, I had just gotten off the phone with my son’s high school football coach. Training camp starts next Monday but as it happens he will miss the first few weeks of camp because of our family’s upcoming European vacation. I thought about how good it would have been for him to attend this camp, not just because he’s barely played any football and needs to learn, but also because it would be a great opportunity for him to connect socially as he prepares to enter a new school. And so I worried. This morning, my daughter was getting her wisdom teeth removed. As I’ve written about before, I have a pathological hatred of the dentists’ chair. Also, like all parents, I hate watching my kids in pain. So, I worried about her, too.
(This is in addition to the usual catalogue of worries that I have for my kids and their futures.)
I can find all kinds of other things to worry about. There is no shortage of options for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. I worry about the future of the institutional church and the way my employment is inextricably linked with this. I look around at uber-competent peers and I worry about how I’m measuring up. I worry about how uncreative I often feel and how it feels like I have so little to say. I worry about how others will see me when I run out of words. I worry about the husband and father I am undoubtedly failing to be. I worry about how much I’m daily giving my kids to recover from some day. I worry about back pain and how I should exercise more regularly. I worry about those I love facing uncertain futures. I worry about the Syrian families our church has sponsored to come to Canada and how they will adapt once they’re on their own. I worry about the crude and violent culture that we are daily creating collectively. I worry about wars and rumours of wars.
And Jesus says that I’m not supposed to worry, I know. So I worry about how much I’m worrying and what this says about my faith.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry…
On the face of it, this could seem like singularly bad counsel. “Don’t worry, you can’t control anything anyway,” Jesus says. Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Which is kind of like a restatement of the problem. Not having any control over things is actually one of the main reasons I worry. So thanks a lot, Jesus. Consider the lilies… Well, I’m sure they’re lovely, but lilies don’t have mortgages or kids to get through high school and I seriously doubt if they have back pain. The life of a lily sounds pretty cushy, to be frank. And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things… Well, they strive for a reason. So many people in the world could use a bit more to eat and drink, after all.
As I reread Luke 12 this morning, it occurred to me that Jesus probably wasn’t saying that I shouldn’t worry because the world is not a worrisome place. It is, obviously. And, equally obviously, it was in Jesus’ day, too. First century life was almost certainly more difficult in countless ways than mine. Poverty, war, disease, uncertainty, relational challenges, questions of identity and meaning and hope—these are not recent afflictions or discoveries. They’re as old as humanity itself. No, Jesus cannot be saying that we shouldn’t worry because there aren’t things worth worrying about. Clearly, there are.
As always Jesus is probably making a statement about the kinds of people that worrying turns us into. Worrying turns us almost inevitably inward. Rather than being actively engaged in contributing goodness to the world around us, worry so often has a paralyzing effect, rendering us myopic, melancholy, and pretty much useless. We wind up prisoners of our own making, determinedly imagining the worst outcomes before they ever materialize. Worrying makes us less than we ought to be. We don’t need any particularly deep theology to make this point. How many of us enjoy being around worriers? How many of us admire ourselves when we worry? Conversely, how many of us admire those who stubbornly keep inserting a determined joy and optimism into things, even when things look bleak on the surface? I certainly do.
And ultimately, of course, “life is more than food and the body more than clothes” (Luke 12:23). There is a kingdom worth seeking that transcends all of our real or imagined momentary afflictions. It is this kingdom that Jesus says our Father has been pleased to give us, that we are invited to treasure above all else. It is a kingdom that infects our worrisome world with hope, a kingdom that will never pass away, a kingdom that no pain or waste or decay can ever destroy. It is a kingdom for which the most determined and creative joy we can muster is but a dress rehearsal.
Do not worry, Jesus says. Not because there aren’t things to worry about but because our hearts need to be trained to treasure brighter things.
Rumblings 
Your last paragraph nailed it. Those are sentences I’m writing down for myself.
Thank you kindly 🙂
It occurred to me after reading your post that Jesus both commands us not to worry about our daily bread, but teaches us to pray for it. (Your reference to the coming kingdom in the second last paragraph tipped me off). He seems quite comfortable with our humanity.
Thanks for your reflection and honesty. Greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Kevin. That’s a great observation.
Your writing today prompted several thoughts in me. I thought of the woman who came up to me after church, after a sermon I preached on not worrying, and she told me that worry was necessary to her because it prompted her actually to do something that needed to be done. I had to agree.
I thought, too, of the ancient Stoics, who taught that we ought not worry about things outside of our control, which is most everything, since things outside of our control are precisely that, outside of our control, and worry will not magically put them in our control.
And I thought, finally, of this inner debate in me lately, wondering if God intervenes in human life at all, wondering if God does anything tangible in human life at all, which would make praying for specific, concrete concerns rather useless since God is not in the business of altering the specific, concrete facts of my life or anyone’s life. A mountain climber, for example, will or will not fall to their death regardless of whether I pray for their safety or not.
What then would a non-interventionist model of God mean for my worrying? Would I still worry? I certainly would. But my worries would be less likely to become prayers.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Chris. I’ve had similar conversations and wondered along similar lines. Prayer is something I have long wrestled with—the whats and the whys and the hows.
At the risk of presumption, I’m going to throw a few links to past musings on these themes below. I hope this won’t be interpreted as a shameless attempt to generate blog traffic. I only link to these because I haven’t really figured out a better way to express my thoughts than this and because I still appreciate the words from others that have sustained me on prayer that I have posted in the past.
Thanks for these links, Ryan. I posted the first on our church’s FB page. I think many of us pray because the alternative seems more hopeless. I pray with silence and with the Psalms, mainly, and I wonder a lot about God who holds in being the rain drop and the cancer cell. I always enjoy your writing. Peace to you.
Thank you, Chris. The reasons for and the ways in which you pray certainly resonate with my own experience.