Anxiety, Ever had it? About anything?

It is a human by product or at least it seems to be.  People from all generations and all cultures have developed anxieties basically over the same stuff; food, shelter, clothing, security.

Those who have nothing worry about their next meal or where will they sleep.  Those who have something but look towards a better life worry about how to get ahead.  Those who have achieved or received great wealth and fortune worry about how to maintain it.   So in the end having wealth is not the solution to alleviating anxiety. 

But faith in Jesus Christ awakens us to the spiritual dimension of life.  By so doing faith allows us or more to the point forces us to see our lives from a new perspective.  That place where we can see that some of those things that we have always worried about really are not all that important.

Stephanie’s mother has a wonderful way at looking at investments.  She is a very wise money manager, she does not act foolishly with it; having been a business teacher all her adult life that would make a lot of sense.  Still, what she says about the money she has invested is that you have to look at it like it is play money.  That is that really is not real until it is in your hands.  Otherwise you can worry yourself to death over whether or not you had gains or losses. 

Her point is that you can’t spend your life worrying about such things. 

By taking our main focus off of these material kinds of things, we can focus on some things that I think are more important, like faith, family and friends.  From that perspective we also become more concerned about justice for all.  We can also look more towards our own spiritual development, as well as our intellectual and physical health.

When the rat race threatens to control you, remember the words of Jesus, “there is more to life”.  Followers in Jesus should be the freest persons in the world.  Free from anxiety, free from social conventions of materialism. And free with their generosity to others.  

The lives of Jesus Disciples were devoted to something higher than the accumulation of great wealth.  It was devoted to the higher purpose of God and these cluster of sayings from the gospel of Luke offers both the challenge to center one’s life on promoting concerns related God’s Kingdom and the extravagant promise of God to provide for those who will do so.

What changes would we make in our lives if we were as concerned about God’s Kingdom as we are about next month’s pay check, or the next harvest, or the next step in one’s career, or even how and where we will spend our retirement years.

What value would we give for going beyond just hearing a sermon but actually working on reconciling broken relationships or actually sharing the good news of God’s love, or working for peace and justice on behalf of those who may be oppressed.

This is what does more good to alleviate our anxiety, doing good towards others. When you help someone else, doen’t it make you feel better.  Doesn’t sharing a loving and caring message with someone who is hurting or in despair do just as much for your own soul as it does for the person you are speaking with.  And these are the things that God calls us to do in the Love of Jesus Christ, which makes it true that trusting in God relieves your stress better than accumulating great wealth for our own sake..

Some of the most difficult words for us to here is what Jesus says in vs 33,  Go and sell your possessions.  The other that he says there is be generous in almsgiving.  We can do the latter far better than the former. Both are a form of divesting ourselves of worldly entrapments. 

What of the call to sell our possessions?  Are we to take this 100% literally? I guess it depends on your faith.  But I really don’t think that it is telling us to go out and sell everything or to give it all away, and become a homeless needy person ourselves.

But what it does call us to take seriously is the question of how much do we really need?  Is all that stuff that clutters our attic, or basement or spare room stuff that we really need. 

I don’t maybe it is, Stephanie tells me over and over again that if she gets into the class room again she is going to need those boxes of teaching aids and classroom and homework templates.  Well we are beginning to see toys go, so it is getting a little better.  But you know, we have a lot of stuff we don’t need.  And having a church/community yard sell is a great way of divesting ourselves of the things we don’t need and investing some of our funds back into the community to those who need it most.

Whatever the case, our top focus should be on putting our trust in God. That doesn’t mean we have to go homeless or penny-less.  It doesn’t mean we have to live like hermits or vagabonds.