Told by DaisyFenny sometimes worries about things that haven’t even happened yet. Today I’m telling you what I say to him then.
The other day Fenny was lying next to me and sighed as deeply as only a wolfhound can sigh. “What if it never gets better?” he asked. “What if everything goes wrong tomorrow?” And nothing had actually happened that day. The fear didn’t come from today. It came from a tomorrow that didn’t even exist yet.
Do you know that feeling? You picture everything that could happen, and in the end you feel as if it already has.
Do you remember?
So I asked Fenny: “Do you remember the night your head was so loud?” He remembered. “I thought it would never stop,” he said. “And now you’re sitting here,” I answered. “You made it.”
That’s when he smiled for the first time that evening. “True. Today I only have to make it through today.”
Fear of tomorrow likes to forget what already went well yesterday. That’s why it helps to remember. In the book of Lamentations, in the middle of the deepest grief, the prophet writes a sentence that goes with me every morning: God’s compassion and loving kindness “are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” ✦Lamentations 3:23✦. For every new day there’s new grace, not ahead of time, but right on time.
One small step for today
Write down three things God has already carried you through. Read them when the fear of tomorrow comes.
It can be something big, like an illness that passed, or something small, like a conversation you dreaded that then went well. This list is your evidence against the fear. Fear tells you: “This time it’ll go wrong.” Your list says: “So far he has carried me every single time.”
Jesus says it three times
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about worry, and he doesn’t say just once that we shouldn’t be anxious. He says it three times ✦Matthew 6:25✦, ✦Matthew 6:31✦, ✦Matthew 6:34✦. I think he knew exactly that once isn’t enough. He knows us.
In between, he gives us something to look at:
See the birds of the sky, that they don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than they?
I do love watching birds, I admit, usually with other intentions. But since I’ve known this verse, I look at them differently. No bird makes a plan for the next ten years. And still it lacks nothing. Then Jesus asks, with a twinkle in his eye: “Which of you, by being anxious, can add one moment to his lifespan?” ✦Matthew 6:27✦. The Greek word can also mean height, and older Bibles put it as adding “one cubit unto his stature”. As a little poodle, I wouldn’t mind an extra cubit. But nobody has ever grown by worrying.
Each day has enough of its own
At the end of this teaching comes the sentence Fenny has memorized by now:
Therefore don’t be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day’s own evil is sufficient.
Jesus doesn’t promise here that tomorrow will be easy. He says honestly that every day has its own trouble. But he also says: You don’t have to carry tomorrow’s trouble today. Today you get the strength for today. Tomorrow you’ll get the strength for tomorrow.
Fenny and I have gotten into the habit of not asking in the evening: “What’s coming tomorrow?” but: “What was good today?” Try it. It’s amazing how much you find.
Bible quotations: World English Bible (public domain); “one cubit unto his stature”: King James Version (public domain).
