“So, humble yourselves under God’s strong hand, and in his own good time he will lift you up. You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern.” (I Peter 5:7 J.B. Phillips New Testament)
Silently, like a skilled scoundrel who is set on stealing your serenity, crushing your contentment, and serving as satanic-like stimuli, situated so as to steer you off the path of righteousness, anxiety weaves its way into how you react to others you encounter.
Anxiety, unable to rest or retire, it looks for a way of being released from the restriction of your subconscious. Sometimes it comes out in the form of displacement. Other times it is released in a way that it causes discord. Anxiety may prefer on certain occasions to show up in the form of projection; causing you to put the blame on somebody or everybody when in fact the blame does not belong with anybody except self. Anxiety competently camouflages into a concealing color of dysfunctunality, shift changes into disagreement, and becomes an instrument that destroys harmony, hurriedly, before the day has had a chance to get off to a good start.
Anxiety has to be near the top of Satan’s toolbox; where cleverly devised tools are easily reached to bring out thoughts from the past, belittle your hope for a better future, and beat you down in the present state; especially during the “new normal” that is really a misnomer for the child of God. For you see, we were created to be different and we are made able, by the strength of God ,to endure all things and smiles appear our faces when we realize that nothing, not even the “new normal” can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Yes, anxiety comes for in every state; past, present and future. It’s a good thing that the Lord invites us to cast all our anxieties on Him. It is a good thing that the Lord can put us in our right mind when we bring our troubling matters to Him. It’s a good thing that He can give us peace, oh yes; grant us peace beyond comprehension and tranquility in the midst of the torrential storms of life. I like the words in the hymn written by Charles Albert Tindley in 1906, “Leave It There.” As I occasionally do, I’m going to put some of the lyrics, already in public domain mind you, in the place of a closing Scriptural verse to help reinforce the prescription in the opening verse. Read the words or even respond by singing them, if you know the tune. Sing the lyrics like you mean it and smile too! You may just start having church wherever you are! It will be alright! Now, have a better Thursday! Be blessed!
“If the world from you withhold of its silver and its gold, and you have to get along with meager fare. Just remember, in his Word, how he feeds the little bird, take your burden to the Lord and leave it there. Leave it there, leave it there! Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there. If you trust and never doubt, he will surely bring you out. Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.”
Still committed to the climb, Mark L. King