Worrying About the Future
What Jesus teaches us about living differently in the present.
Does anyone else have racing and anxious thoughts about the future? I have a confession: My guilty pleasure is obsessing about the future. I am a natural daydreamer, and nothing captivates my imagination like thinking about what is coming up. Sometimes, I use this as a coping mechanism, such as thinking about an upcoming fun event when I am feeling down. This can be a healthy exercise. Most times, though, I daydream about the future when I am worried about something in the present. This is usually in the cases of family, health, or financial matters. I want to have a plan for every possible outcome because I think it will relieve my anxiety. But it doesn’t. It only makes it worse. Sound familiar?
Worrying obsessively about the future affects every part of my life: physically, spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. Anxiety about the future raises my blood pressure, increases cortisol levels, elevates my heart rate, and interrupts my sleep. It makes me feel tired, achy, and nauseous. It makes it hard to focus on tasks. Obsessing about the future impacts my spiritual life by making me feel hopeless, unimaginative, unreflective, and inadequate. Emotionally I feel sad, anxious, and aloof. Being in a negative state of mind, body, and spirit affects the way I interact with other people, especially those I live with and love the most. I can’t focus on conversations, I lack empathy, and I don’t enjoy doing things with them as I should.
I believe that if I worry about a problem hard enough and long enough, I will be able to mitigate the risk of pain, reduce the possibility of confrontation, and make myself feel like everything is going to be alright because I have put in the hours of worry, made the right plans, and am prepared. The flaw in my logic is that the future in my head isn’t real. I am worrying and trying to solve problems in a false reality. Yeah, I might get it right from time to time. I do have good intuition. But the trade-off for living in the future in exchange for living in the present isn’t worth it. There is a reason why almost every therapeutic method, religious practice, and spiritual discipline beckons us to be present, to be grounded, and to detach from worries about the future. Whether it is referred to as mindfulness, practicing presence, or being grounded, the practice of living in the present contributes to an overall better quality of life. Here are three teachings from Jesus that can help us reflect and meditate on ways to be grounded in the present.
Think Differently
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put on. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing…and which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? If you then are not able to do the least, why are you anxious for the rest?”
Jesus, Luke 12:22-26
Jesus simply says, “Don’t worry.” Oookay Jesus, that sounds awesome, but how do we do that? Jesus doesn’t offer anything in the way of practical instructions but instead offers us a radical change in perspective. “For your life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.” We all know this intrinsically. No good parent values the life of their child based on what they eat, wear, or earn. We love them because they are intrinsically valuable and worthy of love just for being themselves. We rarely think about God giving us the same love and grace to us, His children. We easily fall into the trap of believing that our self-worth is in direct proportion to our ability to find and sustain material comforts or achievements. We measure and compare ourselves to others based on what we see externally: their family, their finances, their career, their houses. When we feel like we aren’t doing as well as others or as well as we should in the material world, we lose heart and spiral into feelings of worthlessness.
Jesus is inviting us to just stop caring about such things because they are not life. It is not that material goods do not contribute to life and help sustain life, it is that God sees and loves the immaterial parts of us and that in the end it is the immaterial parts of us that add the most value and beauty to the world. Jesus cares about our material needs and says, “Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out” (Luke 12:29-32, MSG).
“Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out”
Jesus, Luke 12:29-32 (MSG)
Pray Differently
“Therefore, pray: Give us this day our daily bread.”
Jesus, Matthew 6:11
In my job as a chaplain to senior citizens, I get to hear a lot of great stories and great wisdom. One morning, one of our residents rolled her wheelchair over to me and pulled on my sleeve to get my attention. “You know where Jesus says to pray for our daily bread?” she asked. “Yes,” I responded. “God gives me everything I need for the day. When I realized that, I stopped worrying so much.” Then she rolled away. I stood there gobsmacked. What a novel idea!
Living daily is a concept God has consistently used to help us on our journey. Jesus said, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34, NIV). According to our Creator, we have so much to deal with each day that it is unwise to worry about tomorrow. God made us for the day and provides for us by day. In the story of the Exodus, one of the first lessons God gives these newly freed people was a lesson about daily reliance on God. God provided a miraculous food each morning called “manna.” It came with just one rule to follow. The people were to gather only enough food for the day. When they gathered more than a day’s worth of food and tried to save it, it would stink and attract maggots.
Jesus often referred to things we store up for the future as being corruptible. In Luke 12, right before the lesson on worry, Jesus tells the story of a rich man who hoarded his wealth only to die before he could ever enjoy it. In Matthew 6, Jesus says that we shouldn’t store up treasures that vermin can eat or thieves can steal. We do our hearts and minds a great service when we realize that we were made by God to live daily, with the capacity to deal with the day’s problems, and nothing more. We have permission to not put more on ourselves than we should. We have permission to live for the moment and enjoy the day. We have permission to pursue the simplicity of the present and avoid the chaos of always living in preparation for the future. Receiving this good news will change the way we pray because our focus is no longer on everything we need in advance, but for what we need in the moment.
Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own”
Jesus, Matthew 6:34 (NIV)
Trust Differently
Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
The entire time Jesus walked on the earth, his disciples wanted him to give them the details about their version of the end of the world, which was a world in which Israel had an everlasting and inviolable kingdom. They wanted to know what signs to look for. They wanted to know what their place would be in the kingdom. They wanted to know when Jesus would reveal himself as the king of Israel’s kingdom. This persisted all the way up until Jesus was about to leave them and return to Heaven. But Jesus remains emphatic in his answers to these questions. Time and again he tells his disciples that only God the Father has the answers. Only God knows when, only God knows how, and only God will decide positions in the kingdom.
Instead of answering their questions about the future, Jesus says they will be filled with the Spirit. Jesus never called his disciples to know and understand the details about the end of the world or the future of the world. He did call us to be filled with the Spirit and to share the good news of Jesus with others.
We like to ponder and worry about how things are going to end up. We want to know how they will work out. Just give us the details God! That is why we lay awake at night thinking about the future— because it is unknown. That is just a fact we are going to have to settle on and trust God with. We do not know how things are going to end up. We don’t even know how today is going to end. But God does. And God can be trusted more than our imaginations or ability to problem solve. One of the most faithful and powerful prayers we can pray that shows absolute trust in God is, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in my life as it in Heaven.” Amen