It is hard to tell ourselves or others not to worry. Our lives are being upended by a virus. The whole of our society and the global community is in combat mode directed to this invisible attack. Growing numbers are contracting this virus. Health workers do not have all the equipment they need; there is fear that the health system will be overwhelmed. Businesses are shut down, many are out of work, schools are closed, travel is halted, and we are being directed to distance ourselves from one another. And we do not know how long this “new normal” will last. So very much is out of our control. Of course, each of us can take steps to help in this situation, but we are also dependent on the steps others take—including our leaders. Anxiety is a natural and even necessary response. Fear gets us responding to situations that need quick action. It got our attention to the realities of the present crisis so that we would act. And yet anxiety can undo us. Fear can overcome and immobilize us. So, how can we tell ourselves not to worry?
For followers of Jesus and others who are open, that is exactly what Jesus tells us: “Do not worry.” With these words, Jesus calls us from fear to faith and assumes that it is possible to trust rather than be taken over by, and act from, anxiety. With this directive to not worry, Jesus expresses the possibility of our taking steps away from anxiety. Here is the passage: Matthew 6:25-34. Here are the first two verses of that passage:
I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
The reality that makes possible the movement away from anxiety is that God cares for us. When Jesus says to us, “Do not worry,” he is calling us away from the anxiety that would direct our lives, to a trust in God in whom “we live and move and have our being.” He assumes that the empowering Spirit of God will help us to turn from being driven by anxiety, to the care and direction of God.
Jesus also describes the alternative to anxiety: “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Make the focus of your life, God’s reign, God’s ways of governing, and God’s will. Anxiety, when it directs what we do (rather than merely telling us to act fast), will have us losing our humanity and purpose. Anxiety tempts us to believe it is all up to us. It will make us feel that everything is urgent all at once, and it will have us getting frantic and acting rash. Trusting in the One who holds our lives together frees us for action—for compassionate, life-giving action.
The movement from anxiety to liberated action happens in the relinquishing of our lives to God and God’s purposes for this time in which we live. God calls each of us with our gifts and ways of serving, for the time we yet have, to love one another. The message, “Do not worry,” is the same as “Trust God.” Our heavenly Father knows what we need, knows what we need right now in this time, and cares for us. We are simply to go after God’s reign and purpose, and trust that God will provide what we need to do what God calls us to do.