I worry too much.  I worry about money.  I worry about what people think about me.  I worry about my health.  I worry about my children.  I worry about retirement.  I worry about my church.  I worry about the church’s money.  I worry too much.  We hadn’t been married long when Nancy clipped a cartoon out of the morning paper one day and left it where I could find it.  It was a single picture of a rather pathetic looking character whose one line philosophic summary of his life was, “I think, therefore I worry.” 

The real tragedy is that I have so little about which I should worry.  Especially compared to the first century Christians who first read the apostle Paul’s words, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  But, actually, all this worrying has taught me at least two things. 

First, worry is a choice.  It may also be a natural knee-jerk reaction to some pain or crisis.  But, if worry keeps jerking us around it is only because we choose it as our way of perceiving life.  Worry is a choice.  And, the second thing I’ve learned about worry is that, those who choose worry as their primary way of seeing things will always have something about which to worry.  Worry is a very loyal traveling companion to those who make room for it in their emotional and spiritual baggage. 

All of which led the apostle to write, “Don’t choose to worry.  Instead, choose another course of action that produces peaceful and hopeful results, a course of thinking that fills your mind with peace instead of anxiety.”  Anyone who has ever tried to keep weeds out of their lawn knows that the best way to kill weeds is to growth healthy grass.  Healthy grass leaves no room for weeds.  You can put weed-killer on your lawn if you choose, but, if you don’t fertilize the grass and keep it healthy, the weeds will just come right back.  If you want to keep the weeds out of your lawn you have to grow a lawn in which there is no room for weeds.  Just the same, the human mind cannot remain empty.  Like a vacuum, it will attract the closest thought at hand.  The only way to keep unhealthy and worrisome thoughts out of your mind is to fill it with healthy and hopeful ones.

By the way, that’s a principle that works on any level.  Men, for example, who are frustrated with their inability to stop lusting after women who are not their wives need to learn this principle.  The human mind naturally attracts the closest thought at hand.  You cannot just stop lusting.  Ironically, there is something about saying, “I will not lust,” that leaves you thinking about the very thing you are trying to forget.  If you want to stop lusting you have to choose other thoughts.  (If you don’t want to stop lusting then we need to have another conversation altogether.)  But, assuming that you don’t want to live with the justifiably guilty conscience a pornographic mind produces, you have to discipline yourself to think thoughts that leave no room for lust.  A man who doesn’t want to lust after the wrong woman must discipline himself to think loving and beautiful thoughts about the right woman.  There is just something about thoughts of your wife that keeps thoughts of other women at a healthy distance.

This was the principle about which the apostle was speaking when he wrote, “whatever is true . . . honorable . . . just . . . pure . . . pleasing . . . commendable, if there is any excellence and there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”  So, the command is two-sided.  First, don’t worry.  Second, choose peaceful and hopeful thoughts.  It is impossible not to worry unless you are choosing to think hopeful thoughts.  And, if you are thinking hopeful thoughts, it is virtually impossible to worry.

Worry is a choice to see life from the dark side.  Every event that causes worry is only something that has temporarily blocked the light of God that is always shining.  The only way you can live with worry is if you choose to stand on the shadow side of some sadness.  However, please note that choosing the hopeful perspective is about far more than just artificially thinking in positive ways.  If you are standing in a pigpen, simply saying over and over to yourself, “this doesn’t stink so bad,” won’t change the way it smells.  But, if you have to stand for a while in a pigpen you may have to learn to be grateful for the fact that you can smell at all even if what you smell at the time isn’t so pleasant. 

Choosing the hopeful perspective means choosing to see the other side of things, where the light is shining and where we can more easily see whatever is “true, honorable, just, pure (and) pleasing.”  Whenever a person moves from the shadow side of worry to the enlightened side of hope, they will experience what the scripture promised when it said that “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  Every anxious and worrisome thought is only the dark side of some joy and hope we have yet to experience. 

The other day we were driving along when I asked Nancy to listen to a noise the car has been making.  It’s difficult to pinpoint what’s making the noise but it sounds like a $300-$400 noise to me.  I’ve tried driving slower and then faster and even changing lanes thinking the noise would diminish if I just changed the way I was driving.  I’ve been hoping that it would just go away.  But, no matter how I drive or what lane I’m in, the noise stays with me.  In fact, it’s just getting louder and now it’s got me, you guessed it, worried.  It seems to me that, when  you’re worried, you worry a little less if you share your worries with someone else.  That’s why I asked Nancy to listen to it.  So she would worry with me and my worry wouldn’t be as big.  When I asked if she could hear the noise she told me that she’d been hearing it for quite some time, too.  Then, she asked, “Do you know what I do to deal with that noise?”  And, before I could answer, she just reached over and turned the radio up a little louder.

Now, in my wife’s defense, let me rush to say that she was not by any means recommending that we ignore a very real problem.  I honestly believe it was her way of saying to me, yet again, “You think, therefore, you worry too much.”  I don’t know how much it’s going to cost to stop the noise.  But, until we get it to a mechanic who can actually do something about it, instead of worrying, Nancy was saying, let’s listen to the music.  And, when you think about it, that is the way life works.  You get to choose.  You can listen yourself into a worrisome fret every time some nasty noise begs for your attention.  Or, you can listen to the music.  It’s up to you. 

During his high school summers, a friend of mine worked on an oil field construction crew digging ditches.  He and some others were complaining one day about the miserable work and how hot it was and just wishing out loud that the long summer day would hurry up and be over.  An older man, who’d never been able to find another way of making a living, turned to them and said, “when you boys get to be my age you’ll learn to stop wishing your life away.”  My friend was telling me this story some twenty years after it happened.  That old ditch digger’s advice had left him with the permanent reminder that, any given day, you can complain about how hard it is or you can thank God you’re alive to struggle in it.  The old man wasn’t particularly thrilled to still be digging ditches at his age.  But, he was grateful that he was alive to dig anything.

So, here is how the principle works.  When some struggle, pain or sadness temporarily blocks the light, you can stand in its worrisome shadow if you choose.  Or, you can turn your experience around by choosing to stand in the light where hope is always shining brightly.  Every anxious and worrisome thought is only the dark side of some joy and hope we have yet to experience.  And, from the scripture we’ve read this morning, the specific energy that turns us from the shadow land of worry to the hopeful land of light is the energy that only thanksgiving produces.  “In everything,” Paul wrote, give thanks.

When I first had to learn to live with being separated from my boys because of divorce, I had a terrible time.  I was grief-stricken and worried to the point of spiritual and emotional instability.  Even though I saw them a little every day I would be overwhelmed with the sadness that only the dark side of divorce brings every time they had to leave.  Then, one day I met a man who lived some 2,000 miles away from his daughter and only got to see her once every two weeks.  As he told me his story I started feeling better as I realized that I had so much for which to be grateful.  Though they weren’t with me every moment, I did at least get to see my boys every day instead of every two weeks.  And, that is when this principle of scripture first started coming to life for me.  “Whatever is true . . . honorable . . . just . . . pure . . . pleasing . . . commendable, if there is any excellence and there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things . . . (and) the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Every time, even now, when I think about my boys being away and the shadow of sadness begins to cast itself over me, I just start thanking God for how much I do get to see them and the light that always follows gratitude begins to warm my lonely heart.  And, though I have no idea how my friend lives with his loss, I know that living with mine means learning to always focus more on what I have than on what I do not have.  When I practice that kind of thinking, sometimes a practice that demands hard discipline, I find that a strange peace covers me like a warm blanket on a cold winter morning. 

When I was in California leading a men’s retreat several weeks ago, I stayed in the home of a good friend of mine whose church sponsored the retreat.  Another man drove me from the house to the retreat center, about an hour and a half south of San Francisco, through some of the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen.  As we drove along, he was explaining to me that I was also seeing some of the most expensive real estate in all of California.  Since he was in the real estate business himself, this man knew the territory well and explained to me that one person he knew was even building a $40 million home in that area. 

As we drove along and started up into the mountains, we found ourselves taking hairpin curves left and right as we made our way along through massive stands of redwood trees.  My real estate friend then told me the most startling thing.  The reason the road was curved, he said, was because it was built right on top of the infamous San Andreas Fault that scientists believe will shift sometime in the near future causing an earthquake of catastrophic proportions.  And, then, as we made one turn he pointed to a sign that indicated the name of the road that led up into one very expensive estate.  Those folks call it, “Why Worry Lane.” 

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why those folks would build some of the most expensive homes in one of the most dangerous places.  “Why Worry Lane,” they call it.  Then, I looked around and realized why.  They build up there because the view is worth it.  They could build in safer places, for sure.  But, they’d never see the redwoods and the mountains the way do living there.  The view is worth the risk.  Sure, the earth may open up any day and swallow everything they’ve built.  Then again, maybe it won’t.  They’ve just chosen a “why worry” attitude and gone on living a very good life.

So, that’s how it works.  Any lane you live on can be a worry lane or why worry lane.  It’s all a matter of whether you choose to live in the shadows and listen to the noise that only worry makes or you choose to live in the light and listen to the music that you can only hear when you are celebrating the grace of God.  Any lane can be a “why worry” lane if that’s what you choose.  It’s strictly up to you.