Our God will carry us, nurse us, and bind up our wounds, even as we feel the loss, and he will get us to where he has promised. Now is not the whole story. But he is with us now, taking care of what he knows we need. This is the kind of gospel that can meet our anxiety when we are widowed, when Parkinson’s comes, in redundancy, divorce, and heart attacks. Do not, Christian, do not be anxious. Not because there is nothing to fear, but because we have a Father, and day by day he will provide.

It is hard to talk about anxiety in a helpful way. At best, I have a shallow, half-understanding of anxiety. I am not a psychologist, and I no longer have the absolute confidence of a person who has only known one story of anxiety up close. A flat, simple story of anxiety is easy to talk about. Sad thing is, the story of anxiety gets more complex with every real person you engage with.
Discussion around anxiety is everywhere. In his recent book, The Anxious Generation, New York University professor Jonathan Haidt offers an interpretation of the overwhelming reports of massive anxiety among teenagers and young people by focusing on the destructive impact of smartphones and social media on childhood.
Lauren Oyler, a young novelist, offers a perspective from within the anxious generation. She wrote an essay in the New Yorker in March 2024 about her own experience of anxiety and uncertainty about the kind of help she might or might not need. It’s a good read if you want to hear someone’s experience of trying to talk about her own anxiety in the context of a cultural deluge. And she points out that we are not the first people to experience a huge uptick in reports of anxiety as we see the world changing around us:
The concept of Americanitis, popularized by William James at the end of the nineteenth century, described “the high-strung, nervous, active temperament of the American people,” according to an 1898 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The causes — advances in technology and accompanying pressures of capitalism — were much the same as they are today.[1]
Please do not think I am minimizing anxiety. I am grateful that it is way less stigmatized than even a decade ago and that good therapy and effective medications are far more widely available. Good people are doing good work to help people in real suffering.
But, or even better said, and whenever we’re faced with something that seems out of control in our current moment, we do well to look beyond our moment.
Jesus knows the anxiety of change. He taught people whose political worlds were defined by hostile occupation, economic volatility, and colonial pragmatism. Their daily lives were lives without refrigeration, without preservatives, without Ziploc© bags. Each day, the question of where food was coming from was as live a question as whether the authorities would crack down on them. In the face of all these unknowns, how could they be anything but anxious?
Matthew 6:24-34 does not provide us with a silver bullet to the whole problem of anxiety. Jesus is not offering a simplistic “stop it!” to people whose brains and bodies play host to generalized anxiety or traumatic responses.
Instead, this passage must be read in context, and when we do, we will see that Jesus is focused on a key tension:
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.  (Matt. 6:24-34, ESV)
Step back with me. The thesis that sets up this key tension is this: faced with anxiety about the future, we will be devoted to the one thing that truly gives us hope, and we will consider other sources of hope inconsequential. Jesus goes so far as to say that we will even come to despise them.
And here is the tension: What will that source of hope be? Ultimately, Jesus teaches, in the face of uncertainty, we will either devote ourselves to our own capacity to meet trouble, here represented by money, or we will devote ourselves to the conviction that God cares for us. We will either devote ourselves to our own capacity to meet trouble, primarily through money, but possibly also hustle, worry, politics, and more — power in our own hands — or we will devote ourselves to the conviction that God, our Father, cares for us. Power cradling us in his own hands.
It will almost never feel this black and white, but in those moments of interior crisis we will preach to ourselves one of two gospels: I am alone, or I am a child.

I am alone. If I anticipate and mitigate every crisis that tomorrow might bring, I may be able to take care of myself. I may be able to please the gods. I may be able to future-proof myself.
I am a child. I have a loving heavenly Father who has saved my life and will add to that all I need for each day.

It feels so binary, yet these are the two options everything else boils down to. Mitigating crises might not look like building our bank balance; it might look like surrounding ourselves with capable people who owe us favors or building our positive karma. These options go beyond action and back to identity. And fundamentally, they go back beyond our own identity to the identity of God himself. Does he exist? Does he care? Can he help?
So those are our two choices: Am I alone, or am I loved? Jesus asks us which narrative we will believe. But they are choices offered with a huge bias: come towards love. Jesus beckons us towards God’s love using three reminders.
First, we are to choose our heavenly Father over money.
We cannot begin to understand this text and this teaching without understanding the context. There are two instances of the word ‘therefore’ in this passage, and the first is almost at the beginning, in verse 25. This first ‘therefore’ is emphatic.  In fact, it is not the usual word for ‘therefore’: it is more like ‘hey!’ Because of all this, therefore…
Read More

Related Posts:

.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{align-content:start;}:where(.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap) > .wp-block-kadence-column{justify-content:start;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);row-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);padding-top:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);padding-bottom:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd{background-color:#dddddd;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-layout-overlay{opacity:0.30;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}
.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18{position:relative;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

In suffering, we tend to draw inward and isolate to protect ourselves from further pain. Satan preys on that instinct, convincing us that we don’t need anyone else, and that others will only add to our grief, rather than easing it. He wants us to feel alone and self-righteous in our pain. Yet as we lean into God and his people, the Lord can transform us into humble servants, sanctified and shaped by our suffering.

One of my dearest friends lost both parents to suicide. Her father died when she was a teenager, and her mother passed away more recently. I was stunned and speechless when she told me about her mother’s death. How does anyone endure that kind of loss?
I was sure my words would be inadequate and unhelpful, yet my friend kept calling, asking my advice, letting me minister to her. She humbly shared both her pain and her struggles. She confessed her anger at her siblings’ callous response and asked me to pray for her. When she told me that our conversations had helped her, I was convicted by how rarely I let people into my pain. I had often assumed that if they hadn’t experienced what I had, they wouldn’t be able to understand it.
Rather than inviting others into my pain and grief, I’ve often pushed them away. I’ve felt a vague sense of self-righteousness, confident that no one could speak into my life except God himself. I’ve dismissed others’ experiences, even the comfort of friends, because they couldn’t fully relate to my suffering.
Temptation to Isolate
Right before my son’s death, my husband and I had worked through a significant marital struggle that intertwined with my grief. Messy and muddled, there were parts of my pain I felt I couldn’t share with others, so I was sure that no one could know how I felt. I withdrew from fellowship, hesitant to share deeply with others—it felt too vulnerable to be that exposed. Besides, I looked stronger and more spiritual when I didn’t let people in.
My attitude unknowingly intensified my pain, cutting off an important means of God’s grace and rescue: his people. My grief isolated me, ushering me into a silent silo in which I felt compelled (or perhaps entitled) to deal with my struggle alone. I said I was tired of hearing platitudes, but in truth, I was tired of hearing anything. I had closed everyone off, and no one dared to enter in.
This temptation to isolate, to pull away from community, assuming no one can help, is common in suffering. So how do we fight this temptation to pride—to believing that no one understands us and therefore no one can help us?
Pain and Loss and Sin
As someone who has dealt with layers of losses, I have seen this temptation to pride and isolation more than once. Pain, like sin, has a way of hardening my heart and blinding me to my real need.
When I was a single parent dealing with a significant physical disability, I was less concerned about being rescued from my sin than I was about being commended for my faith. In fact, I saw myself as a righteous victim in anything related to my suffering. Yet even those commended by God for their righteousness were not sinless, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). For instance, while Job was a righteous man, his suffering humbled him, and he repented in dust and ashes for pridefully speaking of what he did not know (Job 42:5–6).
I hadn’t fully considered my own sin as it related to my suffering until I heard Joni Eareckson Tada share about how pain and loss had sanctified her. She was paralyzed in a diving accident at age 17 and often spoke about how God changed her, transforming her once-sour and peevish disposition as she submitted daily to Jesus. Most of us would expect, or at least excuse, a quadriplegic with an irritable attitude, but Joni was determined to let God use her disability to refine her character. She writes in Lost and Found:
Read More
Related Posts:

DISCLAIMER: The Aquila Report is a news and information resource. We welcome commentary from readers; for more information visit our Letters to the Editor link. All our content, including commentary and opinion, is intended to be information for our readers and does not necessarily indicate an endorsement by The Aquila Report or its governing board. In order to provide this website free of charge to our readers,  Aquila Report uses a combination of donations, advertisements and affiliate marketing links to  pay its operating costs.