Since COVID, there have been plenty of fine sermons, blogs, articles, and books about anxiety. There have been even more books and discussion about rest, one of anxiety’s opposites. But it is hard to see much impact from all this teaching. Today, anxiety simply is. It seems to have reached a tipping point: It has become normal. For many, it is the background noise of life — irritating, always there, nothing you can do about it. If the noise were to stop, some of us might even feel a bit lost.
Christians have work to do. We want to make the attractive truths from Scripture more available. This follows the lead of the wisdom tradition, which is always thinking about what to say and how to say it — accurate words in a wrapping that is just right. Proverbs, for example, contains truth that comes and finds you. It invites you to listen. The person speaking clearly loves you and is passionate about the topic. There are stories that make you want to yell to the person walking blindly into a trap, “Stop, stop, don’t go there!” There are images of pigs with jewelry that make you laugh. And the fear of the Lord is always in view.
Anxiety needs these creative approaches. By nature, it is distracted and will not remember too much from a thirty-minute-plus sermon or a systematic teaching about fear and anxiety. We who teach, in response, are happy to learn new ways of communicating old truths. Emily Dickinson put it this way:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant . . .
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.
How can we offer truth in a way that dazzles just enough to incite the anxious person’s imagination and will?
The material ahead will approach anxiety through two ideas borrowed from the Psalms: Speak to God more than about him, and animate that conversation with God’s implicit questions. The Psalms are Scripture’s literary peak, and they often invite us to imagine God leading us deeper into conversation with him. (Psalm 10 is one example of a psalm that has these implicit questions, which steer the psalm’s focus from doubts to troubles to God’s promises.)
As with all the Psalms, you can begin by letting the words ahead speak on your behalf, but don’t stop there. You will want to embellish them with your own words, and then, as you hear God’s questions to you, craft your own cry to him — your own psalm — in response.
Consumed by Worry
“Please, tell me,” God says. “What is truly on your heart? What fears and anxieties run deep in you?”
You might be reluctant to respond at first. Anxiety tends to turn inward, so you are not accustomed to just speaking about them to God. If you pray, you might only ask that they be taken away. But he’s asking, so you respond.
“My anxieties are beginning to feel so . . . normal. They are like my heart beating or my breathing. They are just one big thing hanging out in the background of life, though occasionally they catch fire and become the only thing I feel.
“You call me ‘little flock.’ Your plan was that Jesus would bring me to you, once and for all.”
“My anxiety is very physical. I really do feel it. It barks out commands: run, escape, die, hide, disappear. When it is strong, I would prefer to be anywhere but where I am. It might start in my gut, but then it moves through my whole body. The sky, I think, will fall — but I don’t know when. Once it gets to my brain, it can take control. It becomes the only thing I think about.
“So, I counter it, sometimes with mindless scrolling or AI. That can distract me from my worries, but it also provokes new ones.”
“Like what?” God asks. “Say more.”
“My anxieties feel like they are floating free and untethered, but when I think about them, they are connected to certain threats. Money, health, and the likelihood of failure — these are the usual suspects. Then there are fears that relationships could fall apart, the country could go up in flames, and an active shooter could show up anywhere. The more I think about them, the more I see that my worries are about . . . everything.”
Comforted by His Care
God responds, “You have good reasons for your worries. You cannot control the next minute of your life, let alone world events. Now tell me: What do you know about me, and what is on my heart?”
“Hmm. I could say what I feel — that you are far away and busy with other things. But you are asking for more than that. This is a difficult question.
“So, to know the Father, I look to the Son. I think the Son is gentle and compassionate with his worried, stressed, anxious, and fearful people. Jesus takes us for a walk and points us to daylilies and birds (Matthew 6:25–34; Luke 12:22–34). He wraps his words in gentleness, because he knows weakness. And for him, the threats on his relationships and his life actually came true. In Gethsemane he knew what it was like to find the next step almost unbearable. He, after all, is the real author of the psalms of lament.
“Then the apostle Paul confirms one of the clearest themes in all Scripture. When fears and worries seize us, we know that God is with us (Philippians 4:5–6).”
“Say a little more,” says your God. “Do you believe that I care for you?”
“I see that I was in my own head. Thinking about you is good; talking to you is better.
“Do I believe that you care for me? . . . Do I believe that you care for me? My first thought is, Not really — and for bad reasons. I am so often in my own world. I consider my version of life, and I don’t often think about what is true about you. If I do, I don’t make it personal.
“My second thought is that your love and mercy do not change because of my unfaithfulness. I know that I need Jesus and to rest in his forgiveness and righteousness and not my own works. You call me ‘little flock.’ Your plan was that Jesus would bring me to you, once and for all.”
“Do you believe I care for you?”
“Yes, I believe you care, even for me.”
“This,” says Jesus, “has been a fine walk with my Spirit.”
Writing Your Psalm
There is much more to say, but Scripture itself is not a systematics text that tells us everything at once. Tomorrow, you will rehearse this conversation and perhaps go further. For today, what makes this a fine walk is that you spoke to your Lord. With your first sentence or two, you made this a psalm.
