I've been thinking about
anxiety lately.
Both my own anxieties and why anxiety seems to come so easily for any of us.
And here's what I've discovered...
We all have ideas about what our future should look like... whether we're talking about how our day unfolds or what takes place in the coming weeks, months and years.
As we envision this, it's easy to develop expectations... and get committed to certain outcomes.
The problem is...
We have no control over the thousands of variables that influence whether the vision we have becomes reality.
And this lack of control over what's to come leads to
ANXIETY.
So what are we to do?
... Isn't it good to have a vision for the future and fix our attention on certain outcomes?
It is.
In fact, it's how we accomplish things in the world.
We just have to allow our vision to be
subject to revision...
God is the only one who has the big picture of what He wants to do with our lives.
In the meantime... we work with the picture we've got... and commit ourselves to what He's given us to do right now... leaving what's next -- and the ultimate outcome -- to Him.
And we pray.
And with this focus, anxiety seems to go away... and we tend to become a lot more effective with whatever God has called us to at the moment.