I knew from the moment that I saw the smoke that it
wasn’t good. Whenever you see smoke
coming from your car, it’s not a good thing.
But I knew I couldn’t do anything about it right then. I’d have to wait until at least things
cooled down.
So I went into the gym to do my devotions while I
worked out. And I was pretty devoted
that morning. I was anxiously thinking
about my car. Could the engine be
blown? Would it even start? Would I need to buy a new one? How was I going to afford that? I was praying to God. At least let it start. Let me get it to the mechanic.
Thankfully, it did start. And after a week at the repair shop, my car
is as good as, well, as good as any car with 100,000 miles of wear and tear can
be. But have you ever had that sort of
terrible anxiousness? It could have been
an unexpected financial emergency or a crucial document you couldn’t find. Maybe it was worse, a serious health
issue; a problem with your child; a crisis in your marriage. Whatever the case, it left you fearfully
anticipating all the bad things that could be.
And that’s an awful feeling.
But as hard as that sort of anxious is, almost as
hard to deal with is the daily grind of a world that feels more anxious every
day. You can live these days with a
sort of background anxiety that pervades your life. And over time, it wears you down. In our nation, even with our wealth and
security, this sort of anxiety has gotten worse. About 15 years ago, researchers surveyed
mental health in 15 nations, nations like Nigeria, Lebanon, and the
Ukraine. Now if you know anything about
these countries, you know. They had a
lot to be anxious about, poverty, ethnic conflict, terrorism, coming out of
communism. Some of these countries,
like Lebanon, had lived with violence and war for decades. Yet, guess what nation had the highest level
of anxiety? The good old US of A.
And if anything, this election season, which,
whoever you’re voting for, you’re just wanting to be over already has only made
our nation more anxious than ever. How
did all this anxiousness happen? More
importantly how do you overcome it? How
do you live a life that is more at peace, less anxious and more relaxed, more joyful
even? In this ancient song, God shows
you the way. Let’s listen and hear what
God has to say.
Why have Americans become so anxious? More crucially, how do you lower the level
of anxiety? How do you get to a place
where worry doesn’t grind you down, where life feels more peaceful, relaxed;
serene? In this song, God points the
way. God tells you. Freedom comes as you leave both control and
neediness behind. It comes as you stop
anxiously grabbing at God’s hands and discover the peace that comes from gazing
at God’s face.
You see. When
you get caught up in anxiety, two things tend to happen. You end up doing too much or doing too little. What do I mean?
Have you ever been in a meeting where the leader
wasn’t getting the job done? Nobody was
deciding anything. People were talking
problems to death. No one was
volunteering for any tasks. When I’m in
a meeting like that, I want to just take over.
But if I do that, I’m not doing it to help anyone out, to get the
meeting on track. There are lots of
ways to get a meeting on track without taking it over. No, I’m doing it to ease my anxiety. Things aren’t going the way I want and I want
that to stop. But of course if I jump
in, does it do that? No. If anything my over functioning makes things
more difficult and stressful not only for me, but likely for everyone
else.
You see that’s one way you can deal with the anxiety
you feel. You take over or at least try
to. You try to control things, tell
others the way things need to be. You
get busy doing stuff, any stuff, as long as it calms your anxiety. But here’s the truth. A lot of challenges you can’t multitask yourself
out of. And if
you make a lifestyle of that type of over functioning, not only will you end up
still stressed and anxious, but now you’ll be resentful and bitter too.
That’s why this song begins with these words. “O Lord my heart is not lifted up, my eyes
are not raised too high. I do not
occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.” God is saying in these words. “You want the anxiety to lessen. Stop trying to control what you can’t or
think that’s what you have to do.”
And don’t think this over functioning just happens
with people, you can do it with God.
Sometimes my son gets impatient with how long it takes to put dinner on
the table. And in his impatience, he
starts repeating the same two words. All
done, all done, all done. He figures if
he says it enough, that will make dinner get to the table that much
faster. But it doesn’t. Saying all done a hundred times doesn’t make
the oven cook any quicker.
In the same way, we can come to God with our
requests, repeating them again and again, thinking if we say them enough, it
will make it happen. Now it’s a good thing to be persistent with
God in our prayers. But often our
persistence can become something else.
It can become the sort of anxious repeating my son does at dinner time.
Many years ago, I read these wise words from the
writer Maggie Ross. Ross wrote this.
Most
of the time, we cry out to God because we perceive ourselves to be trapped in
some way. We feel ourselves being drawn
by circumstances out of our control into the vortex of a single inexorable
future. The same obsessive thoughts and
fears repeat over and over. If these
obsessive thoughts become obsessive prayers, we are only sinking more deeply
into what we fear. But if in the depths
of our interior silence we simply name the problem, this naming can open our
perspective and may even set in motion the process of resolution in the space
where we wait on God, the space where there are many futures.
We don’t know what the future holds, though we think
we do. That’s what worry is. It’s us saying to God. “God, this is the way it has to be, and if
it’s not, then you’ve gone seriously wrong.
This is the only future that must be.”
But in reality we don’t know that, and acting like we do, doesn’t help
us solve the problems. It only makes us
more anxious about them.
But when anxiety hits, you may not want to spring
into action at all. What you may want to
do is take a nap. Anxiety can lead you
to over function or to under function, to get so paralyzed by the worry and
fear, you don’t do anything at all.
Instead you wait for somebody to rescue you. Maybe you’re hoping God will do it or some
over functioning friend or family member.
You might cover up with your inaction with some pious phrase, like, “I’m
just waiting on the Lord.” And that may
be the case. Or it could be that you’re
just putting your head in the sand.
In a church I served years ago on Long Island, one
of the pastors who had come before me had lost his wife, Marjorie to breastcancer. She had died fairly young,
leaving behind two kids still in high school.
Now I knew that part of the story, but a few years later I heard the
other part, a part that haunts me still.
I was talking with Lorna, the church music director, who had known Marjorie
well. We started talking about
Marjorie’s death. And after a silent
pause, Lorna said to me. “You know that
she knew.” Puzzled I asked, “What?” Lorna said.
“One day, Marjorie was examining her breast and she felt a lump. She was a nurse. She knew what she needed to do. But she didn’t. She was too scared to. By the time, she got around to doing
anything, it was too late.” Marjorie
had shared that with Lorna as a warning, to not let fear paralyze her, to
prevent her from doing what needed to be done.
That’s
why the next words, when they talk about calming and quieting compare it to
what a weaned child does with its mother.
A child that has been weaned has a much different relationship than one
still looking for the milk. Before the
weaning, what does that kid want from the mother? That child wants Mom, the marvelous milk
machine. But then the milk train
stops. At first, the baby freaks. No more milk? Really? But then the child realizes something. The milk is gone, but mom remains. And the baby realizes that mom, even without
the milk, is more than enough.
In
that one word, weaned, God is telling us something crucial. Life, in the end, isn’t about anxious
dependence either, looking to God to meet our every need, fill our every
appetite as if that could even happen. Life
with God is about relationship, about simply being connected to God not for
what God can give us, but because of who God is. At some point, you have to stop looking for
God’s hand in order to gaze upon God’s face.
And
in that gazing, God frees you from anxiety and fear. God liberates you from trying to do too much
or get away with doing too little.
Instead God gives you the freedom to live and to act not out of
anxiousness and fear, but confidence and peace. How does this gazing at God work? It sounds nice, sure. But
how does it work?
It
works because you aren’t gazing at some romantic idealized image of the Divine.
You are gazing at the face of the real God, the God who died for you. When you look at that God in Jesus, gazing
down at the cross, suffering, giving everything for you, the freedom comes. You realize. Jesus went through paralyzing
fear so that your fears don’t need to paralyze you. Jesus did what you never could, so you can
let go and trust instead of trying to control what you can’t. In Jesus, you find the ultimate reality that
frees you from fear, the God who has gone even beyond death, to bring you
home. If that God didn’t abandon you there,
when you had abandoned him, you can know whatever you face, that God will never
abandon you ever. And in that
confidence, in the face of this God, you find the truth that sets you free,
free from fear, free from anxiety, free from anything that separates you from God’s
love. So gaze. Gaze in the face of the One who loved you
first. Gaze at the One who died for you,
and know. In that gaze, in that grace, God has given you
the only gift that truly sets you free.
No comments:
Post a Comment