Learning to Not Worry About the Right Things

Our culture is characterized by an epidemic of worry. There is an entire industry of resources developed by therapeutic professionals targeted to worriers. Books, prescription medicine, websites, meditation--the list goes on and on. Worrying prevention is big bucks.

Our biggest problem today when it comes to worrying is not that we worry too much, but that we worry too much about the wrong things. Our worrying these days tends to be focused on financial, physical, and military security. We worry about the balance of our checking accounts, our income to debt ratio, and our bills. We worry about our health. And we worry about whether we are secure as a nation state from our enemies.

If we are going to worry, we should at least worry about the right thing--the security of our souls. We should be worrying about whether we are living as servants of other people enough, whether we are feeding the hungry enough, whether we are loving our enemies enough, and whether we are seeking God's direction for our lives enough.

Once we start worrying about the right thing--our souls, Jesus tells us that we don't have to worry. We just need to turn to God, accept Christ as Lord, follow God's Spirit, and continue to grow in response to God's grace. Not only will we stop worrying about the wrong things, but we will also stop worrying about the right things.