Do Not Throw Away Your Peace

17 Aug

“Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.”  ~ Randy Armstrong

There are days that I struggle.  We all do.  There are times that I wonder if I am going to have enough energy to get through the entire day.  For that matter, there are times that I wonder if I have the will to get through the entire day.  We have all heard the famous phrase, “The Lord will never give you more than you are able to handle.”  There are times I wonder if maybe, just maybe, He might have miscalculated what I can handle.  I am sure the same holds for you.

In those circumstances, there is one constant: worry.  We worry about a great number of things.  Jesus told us several times in the Gospels that we should not allow ourselves to be overcome with worry, that we should place everything into His Father’s hands.  If we do so, we hear, we will be comforted by a God who loves us dearly.

This takes faith and trust.  When we are anxious and worrying, that faith and trust might be hard to summon.  Yet, summon we must.  None of us wants to deal with the effects of long-term worry.  None of us needs high blood pressure, high blood sugar, tension headaches and the like.

When we find ourselves overwhelmed, we need to do all that we can to gather all of our cares together and give them to God.  His shoulders are much broader and stronger than ours!

FAITH ACTION:  Take some time for quiet prayer and focus upon the words of the following Serenity Prayer:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.