OVERCOMING ANXIETY
Matthew
6:19-21 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures
on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not
destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also.
He is really
directing our attention to the fact that even with and despite this perfectly
justified care we can be unfaithful to God…when we take all these tasks and
gifts…received from God…and thus give preference to the created things over the
Creator. But in the language of the Bible this way of turning things upside
down is called – idolatry….
We
are anxious, for example, about food and clothing. Don’t we know that as God’s
children we get them from God’s hand? …But often how indifferent we are to this
giving hand compared with the gift itself. How typical it is of us: we do not
worry about whether we remain in the hands of God or what this hand may do with
us; we worry only about the means by which God is supposed to help us. I say
“supposed,” for we have all got it in our heads that we are supposed to be
helped in such and such a way. We must have food and clothing at this time,
from such and such a source, and in such and such quantity. True, we understand
that it is God who must help us and that we cannot get along without him (after
all, we’re not atheists!), so we go ahead and ask him for the sources, the
dates, and the necessary quantities. We decide, as it were, what “providence”
shall be. God is supposed to help us
only by opening the door we are looking at and carrying out the program which
we have planned for ourselves.
This
is where Jesus sees the curse of care – that in care we are always looking to
our own ways and not to the goals of God…So the first thing he teaches us is to
fix our eyes on this goal: the kingdom of God, everything in which God
completely realizes his higher thoughts and therefore where he will be all in
all. Once we dare to do this, once we earnestly fix our eyes on God’s goal for
our world and our life, then in every circumstance we will also be sure that
everything else “will be ours as well,” that is, that then God will give us
abundantly all the we need to gain this goal.
Life Can Begin Again by Helmut Thielicke, pg. 126.