For the simple reason we are human, fragile and limited. We also worry because we want to solve future problems, prepare for threats, or gain a sense of control, but it often becomes a habit driven by fear of the unknown, a need to be responsible, or even a misguided belief that worrying prevents bad things from happening. It's a natural protective mechanism that signals potential danger, but it can spiral into excessive, unproductive thinking about what might go wrong, rather than focusing on what can be done.
Scott Saul states, ‘we have imaginations, which is a gift that allows us to plan, to dream, to create. But imagination also lets us rehearse disasters that haven’t yet happened and may actually never happen. We can author multiple futures in our minds, many of them catastrophic. Worry is often just our imagination running away from us, dragging our hearts into places we’ve never actually been and may never actually go in real life.’
Jesus very often addressed anxiousness. He says, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble “(Matthew 6:34). He doesn’t say this because our worries never materialize; they often do. He says this because worry removes God from the picture. It is unbelief hidden in the form of precaution.
C.S. Lewis understood this better than most. In his book ‘The Screwtape Letters’, the senior demon Screwtape instructs his apprentice on the best way to lure humans away from God: “It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays... Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”
Lewis saw what Jesus wants us all to see: when we camp out in the future, we live in unreality. The future is not here yet. It may never be what we imagine it will be. And in fixating on it, we abandon the one place where God actually does meet us: right now, in the present. I keep emphasizing that each of us are strategically positioned to fulfil the sovereign purpose of God. Jesus promised never to leave us nor forsake us. If only we can learn to know who He is and the promise of His spirit in our hearts, our fears will be evicted.
You don’t need to rush out of your pain to be okay. Jesus doesn’t need you to recover quickly - He just wants you to recover honestly. Slow healing is still holy.
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