Let us listen, then, to Christ's gracious argument and wise
remonstrances. What, He asks, is the good of our anxiety? What can it do
for us? "Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto his
stature? If, then, ye are not able to do that which is least, why are ye
anxious concerning the rest?" "But, the morrow! the morrow!" we cry.
"Let the morrow," Christ answers, "take care of itself; sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof; learn thou to live a day at a time." "Our
earliest duty," says a great writer of our day, "is to cultivate the
habit of not looking round the corner;" which is but another version of
Christ's simple precept. And the saying, simple and obvious as it may
seem, never fails to justify itself. For one thing, the morrow rarely
turns out as our fears imagined it. Our very anxiety blurs our vision,
and throws our judgment out of focus. We see things through an
atmosphere which both magnifies and distorts. We remember how it was
with Mr. Fearing: "When he was come to the entrance of the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, I thought"--it is Greatheart who tells the story--"I
should have lost my man: not for that he had any inclination to go
back,--that he always abhorred; but he was ready to die for fear. Oh,
the hobgoblins will have me! the hobgoblins will have me! cried he; and
I could not beat him out on't." Yet see how matters fell out. "This I
took very great notice of," goes on Greatheart, "that this valley was as
quiet while he went through it as ever I knew it before or since." And
again, when Mr. Fearing "was come at the river where was no bridge,
there again he was in a heavy case. Now, now, he said, he should be
drowned for ever, and so never see that face with comfort, that he had
come so many miles to behold." But once more his fears were put to
shame: "Here, also, I took notice of what was very remarkable: the water
of that river was lower at this time than ever I saw it in all my life.
So he went over at last, not much above wet-shod."
And even though the morrow should prove as bad as our fears, Christ's
precept is still justified, for the worst kind of preparation for such a
day is worry. Worry, like the undue clatter of machinery, means waste,
waste of power. Anxiety, it has been well said, does not empty to-morrow
of its sorrows, but it does empty to-day of its strength. Therefore, let
us not be anxious. Let us climb our hills when we come to them. God
gives each day strength for the day; but when, to the responsibilities
of to-day we add the burdens of to-morrow, and try to do the work of two
days in the strength of one, we are making straight paths for the feet
of failure and disappointment. All the many voices of reason and
experience are on Christ's side when He bids us, "Be not anxious."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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