In Defense Of Worry

As we inhabit a time of civilizational turbulence, the individual and communal experience of worry is inevitable. As Jesus shares wisdom from a hilltop, he invites the gathered crowd to consider how deeply their (our) anxieties are rooted in control and isolation in the face of challenging and unjust realities. What might a practice look like to respond to anxiety with a humble awareness that begins to draw us out of ourselves, and into connection and active hope?

Scripture & Quotations

• Matthew 6:25-34

• Philippians 4:6-7

“Today we excavate the ruins of collapsed civilizations from the past and display their artifacts in museums, but few of us ever take seriously the possibility that our civilization will follow their pattern of rise and fall.”

- Brian McLaren - Life After Doom: Courage and Wisdom for a World Falling Apart

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

- Serenity Prayer - Multiple Sources

Solvitur ambulando - “It is solved by walking”

- St. Augustine

“To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.”

- Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar In the World

You are going to spend 10000x more time in the 5 blocks surrounding your house than the cool neighborhood a 10-minute drive away.

- Phil Levin, LiveNearFriends

“There is a hole, an emptiness in us all, that we strive to fill. If it doesn’t get filled with something noble and elevated, modern society will quickly pump it full of garbage.”

- Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Suggested Practice

PRAY - Petition and Trust in God’s Presence. Yes, It’s Hard, AND, you’re not alone.

MOVE - Toward the next right and selfless thing, all the better if it is drawing us to…

CONNECT - The beauty of relational proximity and relational depth; we grow strong roots together.

RELEASE - Control and idolatry, in their myriad forms.

PRAY - Always return to gratitude and wonder. We get to participate in the story of hope and renewal RIGHT NOW.