Worry, why?

I am still preaching from the Sermon on the Mount.  The last few weeks have addressed those uncomfortable topics of anger, lust, adultery, oaths, retribution, and loving one’s enemies.  I know that often these are issues that many of us would like to believe do not affect us.  The reality is that in every church, every community, and often in most if not all families these issues in one form or another exist.  The challenge we face is how are we going to respond to others as well as our own issues.  To believe that what we do does not affect the body of Christ and that it is my issue no one else’s is delusional.  The choices that we make and the way we live effects those around is for better or for worse.  That is why we need each other to be accountable in love and that confrontation (Matthew 18:15-20) is vital to relationships and to community.

This Sunday I will be continuing to preach from the Sermon dealing with anxiety and worry.  I came across this illustration as I was preparing my sermon and wanted to share it.

My little dog has an eccentric habit. It’s more of a compulsion really. Whenever we give him a rawhide bone, he spends the rest of the day and sometimes the next in a flurry of activity. Whether he is motivated by instinct or his own peculiar quirkiness or some combination of the two is hard to say.
Given a bone, he commences a search through the house for a suitable place to bury it. Once he settles on a spot, he proceeds to “dig” a hole in the linoleum. Undaunted by the fact that all his furious digging scarcely leaves a scuff on the floor, he carefully places his bone in his imaginary hole. Next he painstakingly noses imaginary dirt over it and then turns himself around to kick some more for good measure. This whole exercise in futility can take a quarter of an hour.
It is at this point, when he inspects his work, that he appears to realize something is amiss. His prize is not sufficiently buried and, in fact, is in plain sight. So he picks it back up and hunts for a better spot. And thus the cycle repeats over and over again until it’s time for a nap.
Sometimes as I watch him and shake my head, I wonder if there is some of this craziness in me, too. Are there things that I do over and over out of a compulsion I do not understand — things that are equally unproductive? Maybe you know what I mean. Things like wearing ourselves out trying to impress other people. Or how about chasing after things that never satisfy. Or maybe it’s just a cycle of busyness that doesn’t really get us anywhere. Sometimes I wonder, but then it’s time for a nap.
—Kari Myers, HomeTouch, October 17, 2010.

I believe it is time for a nap.